OLD  FOGY 

EDITED  BY 

JAMES   HUNEKER 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


^f 


OLD  FOGY 


HIS  MUSICAL  OPINIONS 
AND  GROTESQUES 


With  an  Introduction 
and     Edited 


JAMES     HUNEKER 


THEODORE  PRESSER  CO. 

1712  Chestnut  Street  Philadelphia 

London,  Weekes  &  Co. 


Copyright,  1913,  by  Theodore  Presser  Co. 
International  Copyright  Secured. 


^ 


These  Musical  Opinions    and  Grotesques 
are  dedicated  to 

RAFAEL  JOSEFFY 

Whose  beautiful  art  was  ever  a  source  of 

delight  to  his  fellow-countryman, 

OLD  FOGY 


9570S9 


INTRODUCTION 


M' 


[Y  friend  the  publisher  has  asked  me  to 
tell  you  what  I  know  about  Old  Fogy, 
whose  letters  aroused  much  curiosity 
and  comment  when  they  appeared  from  time  to 
time  in  the  columns  of  The  Etude.  I  con- 
fess I  do  this  rather  unwillingly.  When  I  at- 
tempted to  assemble  my  memories  of  the  ec- 
centric and  irascible  musician  I  found  that, 
despite  his  enormous  volubiUty  and  surface- 
frankness,  the  old  gentleman  seldom  allowed  us 
more  than  a  peep  at  his  personality.  His  was 
the  expansive  temperament,  or,  to  employ  a 
modem  phrase,  the  dynamic  temperament. 
Antiquated  as  were  his  modes  of  thought,  he 
would  bewilder  you  with  an  excursion  into  latter- 
day  literature,  and  like  a  rift  of  light  in  a  fogbank 
you  then  caught  a  gleam  of  an  entirely  different 
mentaUty.  One  day  I  found  him  reading  a 
book  by  the  French  writer  Huysmans,  dealing 
with  new  art.  And  he  confessed  to  me  that  he 
admired  Hauptmann's  Hannele,  though  he  de- 
spised the  same  dramatist's  Weavers.  The 
truth  is  that  no  human  being  is  made  all  of  a 
piece ;  we  are,  mentally  at  least,  more  of  a  mosaic 
than  we  beheve. 

5 


OLD   FOGY 

Let  me  hasten  to  negative  the  report  that  I 
was  ever  a  pupil  of  Old  Fogy.  To  be  sure,  I  did 
play  for  him  once  a  paraphrase  of  The  Maiden's 
Prayer  (in  double  tenths  by  Dogowsky) ,  but  he 
laughed  so  heartily  that  I  feared  apoplexy,  and 
soon  stopped.  The  man  really  existed.  There 
are  a  score  of  persons  alive  in  Philadelphia  to- 
day who  still  remember  him  and  could  call  him 
by  his  name — formerly  an  impossible  Hungarian 
one,  with  two  or  three  syllables  lopped  off  at 
the  end,  and  for  family  reasons  not  divulged 
here.  He  assented  that  he  was  a  fellow-pupil 
of  Liszt's  under  the  beneficent,  iron  rule  of  Carl 
Czemy.  But  he  never  looked  his  age.  Seem- 
ingly seventy,  a  very  vital  threescore-and-ten, 
by  the  way,  he  was  as  light  on  his  feet  as  were 
his  fingers  on  the  keyboard.  A  linguist,  speaking 
without  a  trace  of  foreign  accent  three  or  four 
tongues,  he  was  equally  fluent  in  all.  Once 
launched  in  an  argument  there  was  no  stopping 
him.  Nor  was  he  an  agreeable  opponent. 
Torrents  and  cataracts  of  words  poured  from 
his  mouth. 

He  pretended  to  hate  modem  music,  but,  as 
you  will  note  after  reading  his  opinions,  col- 
lected for  the  first  time  in  this  volume,  he  very 
often  contradicts  himself.  He  abused  Bach, 
then  used  the  Well-tempered  Clavichord  as  a 
6 


INTRODUCTION 

weapon  of  offense  wherewith  to  pound  Liszt 
and  the  Lisztianer.  He  attacked  Wagner  and 
Wagnerism  with  inappeasable  fury,  but  I  sus- 
pect that  he  was  secretly  much  impressed  by 
several  of  the  music-dramas,  particularly  Die 
Meistersinger.  As  for  his  severe  criticism  of 
metropolitan  orchestras,  that  may  be  set  down  to 
provincial  narrowness;  certainly,  he  was  unfair 
to  the  Philharmonic  Society.  Therefore,  I 
don't  set  much  store  on  his  harsh  judgments  of 
Tchaikovsky,  Richard  Strauss,  and  other  com- 
posers. He  insisted  on  the  superiority  of 
Chopin's  piano  music  above  all  others ;  neverthe- 
less he  devoted  more  time  to  Hummel,  and  I 
can  personally  vouch  that  he  adored  the  slightly 
banal  compositions  of  the  worthy  Dussek. 
It  is  quite  true  that  he  named  his  little  villa  on 
the  Wissahickon  Creek  after  Dussek. 

Nourished  by  the  romantic  writers  of  the 
past  century,  especially  by  Hoffmann  and  his 
fantastic  Kreisleriana,  their  influence  upon  the 
writing  of  Old  Fogy  is  not  difficult  to  detect. 
He  loved  the  fantastic,  the  bizarre,  the  grotesque 
—for  the  latter  quality  he  endured  the  literary 
work  of  Berlioz,  hating  all  the  while  his  music. 
And  this  is  a  curious  crack  in  his  mental  make- 
up; his  admiration  for  the  exotic  in  literature 
and  his  abhorrence  of  the  same  quality  when  it 

7 


OLD   FOGY 

manifested  itself  in  tone.  I  never  entirely  un- 
derstood Old  Fogy.  In  one  evening  he  would 
flash  out  a  dozen  contradictory  opinions.  Of 
his  sincerity  I  have  no  doubt;  but  he  was  one  of 
those  natures  that  are  sincere  only  for  the 
moment.  He  might  ftmie  at  Schumann  and  call 
him  a  vanishing  star,  and  then  he  would  go  to 
the  piano  and  play  the  first  few  pages  of  the 
glorious  A  minor  concerto  most  admirably. 
How  did  he  play?  Not  in  an  extraordinary 
manner.  Solidly  schooled,  his  technical  attain- 
ments were  only  of  a  respectable  order;  but 
when  excited  he  revealed  traces  of  a  higher 
virtuosity  than  was  to  have  been  expected.  I 
recall  his  series  of  twelve  historical  recitals, 
in  which  he  practically  explored  all  pianoforte 
literature  from  Alkan  to  Zarembski.  These 
recitals  were  privately  given  in  the  presence  of 
a  few  friends.  Old  Fogy  played  all  the  concertos, 
sonatas,  studies  and  minor  pieces  worth  while. 
His  touch  was  dry,  his  style  neat.  A  pianist 
made,  not  bom,  I  should  say. 

He  was  really  at  his  best  when  he  imchained 
his  fancy.  His  musical  grotesques  are  a  sur- 
vival from  the  Hoffmann  period,  but  written  so 
as  to  throw  an  ironic  light  upon  the  artistic  tend- 
encies of  our  time.  Need  I  add  that  he  did 
not  care  for  the  vaporous  tonal  experiments  of 
8 


INTRODUCTION 

Debussy  and  the  new  school!  But  then  he  was 
an  indifferent  critic  and  an  enthusiastic  advocate. 
He  never  played  in  public  to  my  knowledge, 
nor  within  the  memory  of  any  man  alive  today. 
He  was  always  vivacious,  pugnacious,  hardly 
sagacious.  He  would  sputter  with  rage  if  you 
suggested  that  he  was  aged  enough  to  be  called 
"venerable."  How  old  was  he — for  he  died 
suddenly  last  September  at  his  home  somewhere 
in  southeastern  Europe?  I  don't  know.  His 
grandson,  a  man  already  well  advanced  in  years, 
wouldn't  or  couldn't  give  me  any  precise  in- 
formation, but,  considering  that  he  was  an  in- 
timate of  the  early  Liszt,  I  should  say  that  Old 
Fogy  was  bom  in  the  years  1809  or  1810.  No 
one  will  ever  dispute  these  dates,  as  was  the 
case  with  Chopin,  for  Old  Fogy  will  be  soon 
forgotten.  It  is  due  to  the  pious  friendship 
of  the  publisher  that  these  opinions  are  bound 
between  covers.  They  are  the  record  of  a 
stubborn,  prejudiced,  well-trained  musician  and 
well-read  man,  one  who  was  not  devoid  of  irony. 
Indeed,  I  believe  he  wrote  much  with  his  tongue 
in  his  cheek.  But  he  was  a  stimulating  com- 
panion, boasted  a  perverse  funny-bone  and  a 
profound  sense  of  the  importance  of  being  Old 
Fogy.    And  this  is  all  I  know  about  the  man. 

James  Huneker. 

9 


Old  Fogy 
I 

OLD    FOGY   IS    PESSIMISTIC 

ONCE  every  twelve  months,  to  be  precise,  as 
the  year  dies  and  the  sap  sinks  in  my  old 
veins,  my  physical  and  psychologic — isn't 
that  the  new-fangled  way  of  putting  it? — barom- 
eter sinks;  in  sympathy  with  Nature  I  suppose. 
My  corns  ache,  I  get  gouty,  and  my  prejudices 
swell  like  varicose  veins. 

Errors!  Yes,  errors!  The  word  is  not  polite, 
nor  am  I  in  a  mood  of  politeness.  I  consider  such 
phrases  as  the  "progress  of  art,"  the  "improve- 
ment of  art "  and  "higher  average  of  art"  dis- 
tinctly and  harmfully  misleading.  I  haven't  the 
leisure  just  now  to  demonstrate  these  mistaken 
propositions,  but  I  shall  write  a  few  sentences. 

How  can  art  improve?  Is  art  a  something,  an 
organism  capable  of  "growing  up"  into  maturity? 
If  it  is,  by  the  same  token  it  can  grow  old,  can 
become  a  doddering,  senile  thing,  and  finally  die 
and  be  buried  with  all  the  honors  due  its  long, 
useful  life.  It  was  Henrik  Ibsen  who  said  that 
II 


OLD   FOGY 

the  value  of  a  truth  lasted  about  fifteen  years; 
then  it  rotted  into  error.  Now,  isn't  all  this  talk 
of  artistic  improvement  as  fallacious  as  the  vi- 
cious reasoning  of  the  Norwegian  dramatist? 
Otherwise  Bach  would  be  dead ;  Beethoven,  mid- 
dle-aged ;  Mozart,  senile.  What,  instead,  is  the 
health  of  these  three  composers?  Have  you  a 
gayer,  blither,  more  youthful  scapegrace  writing 
today  than  Mozart?  Is  there  a  man  among  the 
moderns  more  virile,  more  passionately  earnest 
or  noble  than  Beethoven?  Bach,  of  the  three, 
seems  the  oldest ;  yet  his  C-sharp  major  Prelude 
belies  his  years.  On  the  contrary,  the  Well- 
tempered  Clavichord  grows  younger  with  time. 
It  is  the  Book  of  Eternal  Wisdom.  It  is  the 
Fountain  of  Eternal  Youth. 

As  a  matter  of  cold,  hard  fact,  it  is  your  modem 
who  is  ancient ;  the  ancients  were  younger.  Con- 
sider the  Greeks  and  their  naive  joy  in  creation! 
The  twentieth-century  man  brings  forth  his 
v/orks  of  art  in  sorrow.  His  music  shows  it. 
It  is  sad,  complicated,  hysterical  and  morbid. 
I  shan't  allude  to  Chopin,  who  was  neurotic — 
another  empty  medical  phrase! — or  to  Schu- 
mann, who  carried  within  him  the  seeds  of 
madness;  or  to  Wagner,  who  was  a  decadent; 
sufficient  for  the  purposes  of  my  argument  to 
mention   the   names   of   Liszt,   Berlioz,   Tchai- 

12 


OLD  FOGY  IS  PESSIMISTIC 

kovsky  and  Richard  Strauss.  Some  day  when 
the  weather  is  wretched,  when  icicles  hang  by 
the  wall,  and  "ways  be  foul "  and  "foul  is  fair 
and  fair  is  foul" — pardon  this  jumble  of  Shake- 
speare!— I  shall  tell  you  what  I  think  of  the 
blond  madman  who  sets  to  music  crazy  phil- 
osophies, bloody  legends,  sublime  tommy-rot, 
and  his  friend's  poems  and  pictures.  At  this 
writing  I  have  neither  humor  nor  space. 

As  I  understand  the  rank  and  jargon  of  modem 
criticism,  BerUoz  is  called  the  father  of  modern 
instrumentation.  That  is,  he  says  nothing  in 
his  music,  but  says  it  magnificently.  His  or- 
chestration covers  a  multitude  of  weaknesses 
with  a  flamboyant  cloak  of  charity.  [Now,  here 
I  go  again;  I  could  have  just  as  easily  written 
"flaming";  but  I,  too,  must  copy  Berlioz!] 
He  pins  haughty,  poetic,  high-sounding  labels 
to  his  works,  and,  like  Charles  Lamb,  we  sit  open- 
mouthed  at  concerts  trying  to  fill  in  his  big  sonor- 
ous frame  with  a  picture.  Your  picture  is  not 
mine,  and  I'll  swear  that  the  young  man  who 
sits  next  to  me  with  a  silly  chin,  goggle-eyes  and 
cocoanut-shaped  head  sees  as  in  a  fluttering 
mirror  the  idealized  image  of  a  strong-chinned, 
ox-eyed,  classic-browed  youth,  a  mixture  of 
Napoleon  at  Saint  Helena  and  Lord  Byron  in- 
voking the  Alps  to  fall  upon  him.    Now,  I  loathe 

13 


OLD   FOGY 

such  music.  It  makes  its  chief  appeal  to  the 
egotism  of  mankind,  all  the  time  slily  insinuat- 
ing that  it  addresses  the  imagination.  What 
fudge!  Yes,  the  imagination  of  your  own 
splendid  ego  in  a  white  vest  [we  called  them 
waistcoats  when  I  was  young],  driving  an  auto- 
mobile down  Walnut  Street,  at  noon  on  a  bright 
Spring  Sunday.    How  lofty! 

Let  us  pass  to  the  Hungarian  piano-virtuoso 
who  posed  as  a  composer.  That  he  lent  money 
and  thematic  ideas  to  his  precious  son-in-law, 
Richard  Wagner,  I  do  not  doubt.  But,  then, 
beggars  must  not  be  choosers,  and  Liszt  gave  to 
Wagner  mighty  poor  stuff,  musically  speaking. 
And  I  fancy  that  Wagner  liked  far  better  the  solid 
cash  than  the  notes  of  hand!  Liszt,  I  think, 
would  have  had  nothing  to  say  if  Berlioz  had  not 
preceded  him.  The  idea  struck  him,  for  he 
was  a  master  of  musical  snippets,  that  BerUoz 
was  too  long-winded,  that  his  s3miphonies  were 
neither  fish  nor  form.  What  ho!  cried  Master 
Franz,  I'll  give  them  a  dose  homeopathic.  He 
did,  and  named  his  prescription  a  Symphonic 
Poem  or,  rather,  Poeme  Symphoniquey  which  is 
not  quite  the  same  thing.  Nothing  tickles  the 
vanity  of  the  groundlings  like  this  sort  of  verbal 
fireworks.  "It  leaves  so  much  to  the  imagina- 
tion," says  the  stout  man  with  the  twenty-two 
14 


OLD  FOGY  IS  PESSIMISTIC 

collar  and  the  number  six  hat.  It  does.  And 
the  kind  of  imagination — Oh,  Lord!  Liszt,  noth- 
ing daunted  because  he  couldn't  shake  out  an 
honest  throw  of  a  tune  from  his  technical  dice- 
box,  built  his  music  on  so-called  themes,  claim- 
ing that  in  this  matter  he  derived  from  Bach. 
Not  so.  Bach's  themes  were  subjects  for  fugal 
treatment;  Liszt's,  for  symphonic.  The  parallel 
is  not  fair.  Besides,  Daddy  Liszt  had  no  melodic 
invention.  Bach  had.  Witness  his  chorals, 
his  masses,  his  oratorios!  But  the  BerUoz  ball 
had  to  be  kept  a-rolling;  the  formula  was  too 
easy;  so  Liszt  named  his  poems,  named  his 
notes,  put  dog-collars  on  his  harmonies — and 
yet  no  one  whistled  after  them.  Is  it  any 
wonder? 

Tchaikovsky  studied  Liszt  with  one  eye;  the 
other  he  kept  on  Bellini  and  the  Italians.  What 
might  have  happened  if  he  had  been  one-eyed 
I  cannot  pretend  to  say.  In  love  with  lush, 
sensuous  melody,  attracted  by  the  gorgeous 
pyrotechnical  effects  in  Berlioz  and  Liszt  and  the 
pomposities  of  Meyerbeer,  this  Russian,  who 
began  study  too  late  and  being  too  lazy  to  work 
hard,  manufactured  a  number  of  symphonic 
poems.  To  them  he  gave  strained,  fantastic 
names — names  meaningless  and  pretty — and,  as 
he  was  short-winded  contrapuntally,  he  wrote 

15 


OLD   FOGY 

his  so-called  instrumental  poems  shorter  than 
Liszt's.  He  had  no  symphonic  talent,  he  sub- 
stituted Italian  tunes  for  dignified  themes,  and 
when  the  development  section  came  he  plas- 
tered on  more  sentimental  melodies.  His  senti- 
ment is  hectic,  is  unhealthy,  is  morbid.  Tchai- 
kovsky either  raves  or  whines  like  the  people  in  a 
Russian  novel.  I  think  the  fellow  was  a  bit 
touched  in  the  upper  story;  that  is,  I  did  until  I 
heard  the  compositions  of  R.  Strauss,  of  Munich. 
What  misfit  music  for  such  a  joyous  name,  a 
name  evocative  of  all  that  is  gay,  refined,  witty, 
sparkling,  and  spontaneous  in  music!  After 
Mozart  give  me  Strauss — Johann,  however,  not 
Richard! 

No  longer  the  wheezings,  gaspings,  and  short- 
breathed  phrases  of  Liszt;  no  longer  the  evil 
sensuality,  loose  construction,  formlessness,  and 
drunken  peasant  dances  of  Tchaikovsky;  but  a 
blending  of  Wagner,  Brahms,  Liszt — and  the 
classics.  Oh,  Strauss,  Richard,  knows  his 
business!  He  is  a  skilled  writer.  He  has  his 
chamber-music  moments,  his  l3rric  outbursts; 
his  early  songs  are  sometimes  singable;  it  is 
his  perverse,  vile  orgies  of  orchestral  music  that 
I  speak  of.  No  sane  man  ever  erected  such  a 
mad  architectural  scheme.  He  should  be  penned 
behind  the  bars  of  his  own  mad  music.  He  has 
i6 


OLD  FOGY  IS  PESSIMISTIC 

no  melody.  He  loves  ugly  noises.  He  writes 
to  distracting  lengths;  and,  worst  of  all,  his 
harmonies  are  hideous.  But  he  doesn't  forget 
to  call  his  monstrosities  fanciful  names.  If  it 
isn't  Don  Juan,  it  is  Don  Quixote — have  you 
heard  the  latter?  [O  shades  of  Mozart!]  This 
giving  his  so-called  compositions  literary  titles 
is  the  plaster  for  our  broken  heads — and  ear- 
drums. So  much  for  your  three  favorite  latter- 
day  composers. 

Now  for  my  Coda!  If  the  art  of  today  has 
made  no  progress  in  fugue,  song,  sonata,  sym- 
phony, quartet,  oratorio,  opera  [who  has  im- 
proved on  Bach,  Handel,  Haydn,  Mozart,  Beet- 
hoven, Schubert?  Name!  name!  I  say],  what  is 
the  use  of  talking  about  "the  average  of  today 
being  higher"?  How  higher?  You  mean  more 
people  go  to  concerts,  more  people  enjoy  music 
than  fifty  or  a  hundred  years  ago!  Do  they? 
I  doubt  it.  Of  what  use  huge  places  of  worship 
when  the  true  gods  of  art  are  no  longer  wor- 
shiped? Numbers  prove  nothing;  the  majority 
is  not  always  in  the  right.  I  contend  that  there 
has  been  no  great  music  made  since  the  death  of 
Beethoven;  that  the  multipUcation  of  orchestras, 
singing  societies,  and  concerts  are  no  true  sign 
that  genuine  culture  is  being  achieved.  The 
tradition  of  the  classics  is  lost;  we  care  not  for 
17 


OLD   FOGY 

the  true  masters.  Modem  music  making  is  a 
fashionable  fad.  People  go  because  they  think 
they  should.  There  was  more  real  musical 
feeling,  uplifting  and  sincere,  in  the  Old  St. 
Thomaskirche  in  Leipsic  where  Bach  played 
than  in  all  your  m.odem  symphony  and  oratorio 
machine-made  concerts.  I'll  return  to  the 
charge  again! 

DUSSEK  ViLLA-ON-WlSSAHICKON, 

Near  Manayunk,  Pa. 


i8 


n 

OLD    FOGY    GOES    ABROAD 

BEFORE  I  went  to  Bayreuth  I  had  always 
believed  that  some  magic  spell  rested 
upon  the  Franconian  hills  like  a  musical 
benison;  some  mystery  of  art,  atmosphere,  and 
individuaUty  evoked  by  the  place,  the  tradition, 
the  people.  How  sadly  I  was  disappointed  I 
propose  to  tell  you,  prefacing  all  by  remarking 
that  in  Philadelphia,  dear  old,  dusty  Philadelphia, 
situated  near  the  confluence  of  the  Delaware 
and  Schuylkill,  I  have  hstened  to  better  represen- 
tations of  the  Ring  and  Die  Meister singer. 

It  is  just  thirty  years  since  I  last  visited 
Germany,  Before  the  Franco-Prussian  War  there 
was  an  air  of  sweetness,  homeliness,  an  old- 
fashioned  peace  in  the  land.  The  swaggering 
conqueror,  the  arrogant  Berliner  type  of  all 
that  is  tmpleasant,  modern  and  insolent  now 
overruns  Germany.  The  ingenuousness,  the 
naive  quahty  that  made  dear  the  art  of  the  Father- 
land, has  disappeared.  In  its  place  is  smartness, 
flippancy,  cjrnicism,  unbelief,  and  the  critical 
faculty  developed  to  the  pathological  point. 
I  thought  of  Schubert,  and  sighed  in  the  pres- 
ence of  all  this  wit  and  savage  humor.     Bay- 

19 


OLD   FOGY 

reuth  is  full  of  doctrinaires.  They  eagerly  dis- 
pute Wagner's  meanings,  and  my  venerable 
notions  of  the  Ring  were  not  only  sneered  at, 
but,  to  be  quite  frank  with  you,  dissipated  into 
thin,  metaphysical  smoke. 

In  1869  I  fancied  Reinecke  a  decent  composer, 
Schopenhauer  remarkable,  if  somewhat  bitter 
in  his  philosophic  attitude  towards  life.  Reinecke 
is  now  a  mere  ghost  of  a  ghost,  a  respectable 
memory  of  Leipsic,  whilst  Schopenhauer  has 
been  brutally  elbowed  out  of  his  niche  by  his 
former  follower,  Nietzsche.  In  every  ca/e,  in 
every  summer-garden  I  sought  I  found  groups 
of  young  men  talking  heatedly  about  Nietzsche, 
and  the  Over-Man,  the  Uebermensch,  to  be 
quite  German.  I  had,  in  the  innocence  of  my 
Wissahickon  soul,  supposed  Schopenhauer  Wag- 
ner's favorite  philosopher.  Mustering  up  my 
best  German,  somewhat  worn  from  disuse,  I 
gave  speech  to  my  views,  after  the  manner  of  a 
garrulous  old  man  who  hates  to  be  put  on  the 
shelf  before  he  is  quite  disabled. 

Ach!  but  I  caught  it,  ach!  but  I  was  pulverized 
and  left  speechless  by  these  devotees  of  the 
Hammer-philosopher,  Nietzsche.  I  was  told 
that  Wagner  was  a  fairly  good  musician,  although 
no  inventor  of  themes.  He  had  evolved  no  new 
melodies,  but  his  knowledge  of  harmony,  above 

20 


OLD  FOGY  GOES  ABROAD 

all,  his  constructive  power,  were  his  best  recom- 
mendations. As  for  his  abilities  as  a  dramatic 
poet,  absurd!  His  metaphysics  were  green  with 
age,  his  theories  as  to  the  syntheses  of  the  arts 
silly  and  impracticable,  while  his  Schopen- 
hauerism,  pessimism,  and  the  rest  sheer  dead 
weights  that  were  slowly  but  none  the  less  surely 
strangling  his  music.  When  I  asked  how  this 
change  of  heart  came  about,  how  all  that  I  had 
supposed  that  went  to  the  making  of  the  Bay- 
reuth  theories  was  exploded  moonshine,  I  was 
curtly  reminded  of  Nietzsche. 

Nietzsche  again,  always  this  confounded 
Nietzsche,  who,  mad  as  a  hatter  at  Naumburg, 
yet  contrives  to  hypnotize  the  younger  genera- 
tion with  his  crazy  doctrines  of  force,  of  the  great 
Blond  Barbarian,  of  the  Will  to  Destroy — 
infinitely  more  vicious  than  the  Will  to  Live — 
and  the  inherent  immorality  of  Wagner's  music. 
I  came  to  Bayreuth  to  criticize;  I  go  away  pray- 
ing, praying  for  the  mental  salvation  of  his  new 
expounders,  praying  that  this  poisonous  non- 
sense will  not  reach  us  in  America.     But  it  will. 

The  charm  of  this  little  city  is  the  high  price 
charged  for  everything.  A  stranger  is  "spotted" 
at  once  and  he  is  the  prey  of  the  townspeople. 
Beer,  carriages,  food,  pictures,  music,  busts, 
books,  rooms,  nothing  is  cheap.    I've  been  all 

21 


OLD   FOGY 

over,  saw  Wagner's  tomb,  looked  at  the  outside 
of  Wahnfried  and  the  inside  of  the  theater.  I 
have  seen  Siegfried  Wagner — who  can't  conduct 
one-quarter  as  well  as  our  own  Walter  Damrosch 
— walking  up  and  down  the  streets,  a  tin  demi- 
god, a  reduced  octavo  edition  of  his  father  bound 
in  cheap  calf.  Worse  still,  I  have  heard  the 
young  man  try  to  conduct,  try  to  hold  that  mighty 
Bayreuth  orchestra  in  leash,  and  with  painful 
results.  Not  one  firm,  clanging  chord  could  he 
extort;  all  were  more  or  less  arpeggioed,  and  as 
for  climax — there  was  none. 

I  have  sat  in  Sammett's  garden,  which  was 
once  Angermann's,  famous  for  its  company, 
kings,  composers,  poets,  wits,  and  critics,  all 
mingling  there  in  discordant  harmony.  Now  it 
is  overrun  by  Cook's  tourists  in  bicycle  costumes, 
irreverent,  chattering,  idle,  and  foolish.  Even 
Wagner  has  grown  gray  and  the  Ring  soimded 
antique  to  me,  so  strong  were  the  disturbing 
influences  of  my  environment. 

The  bad  singing  by  ancient  Teutons — ^for  the 
most  part — was  to  blame  for  this.  Certainly 
when  Walhall  had  succumbed  to  the  flames  and 
the  primordial  Ash-Tree  sunk  in  the  lapping 
waters  of  the  treacherous  Rhine,  I  felt  that  the 
end  of  the  universe  was  at  hand  and  it  was 
with  a  sob  I  saw  outside  in  the  soft,  summer-sky, 

22 


OLD  FOGY  GOES  ABROAD 

riding  gallantly  in  the  blue,  the  full  moon.  It 
was  the  only  young  thing  in  the  world  at  that 
moment,  this  burnt-out  servant  planet  of  oiurs, 
and  I  gazed  at  it  long  and  fondly,  for  it  recalled 
the  romance  of  my  student  years,  my  love  of 
Schumann's  poetic  music  and  other  illusions  of 
a  vanished  past.  In  a  word,  I  had  again  sur- 
rendered to  the  sentimental  spell  of  Germany, 
Germany  by  night,  and  w^ith  my  heart  full  I  de- 
scended from  the  terrace,  walked  slowly  down 
the  arbored  avenue  to  Sammett's  garden  and 
there  sat,  mused  and — smoked  my  Yankee  pipe. 
I  realize  that  I  am,  indeed,  an  old  man  ready  for 
that  shelf  the  youngsters  provide  for  the  super- 
annuated and  those  who  disagree  with  them. 

I  had  aU  but  forgotten  the  performances. 
They  were,  as  I  declared  at  the  outset,  far  from 
perfect,  far  from  satisfactory.  The  Ring  was 
depressing.  Rosa  Sucher,  who  visited  us  some 
years  ago,  was  a  flabby  Sieglinde.  The  Sieg- 
mund,  Herr  Burgstalles,  a  lanky,  awkward 
young  fellow  from  over  the  hills  somewhere. 
He  was  sad.  Ernst  Kraus,  an  old  acquaintance, 
was  a  familiar  Siegfried,  Demeter  Popovici 
you  remember  with  Damrosch,  also  Hans 
Greuer.  Van  Rooy's  Wotan  was  supreme. 
It  was  the  one  pleasant  memory  of  Bayreuth, 
that  and  the  moon.    Gadski  was  not  an  ideal 

23 


OLD   FOGY 

Eva  in  Meistersinger,  while  Demuth  was  an  ex- 
cellent Hans  Sachs.  The  Briinnhilde  was  Ellen 
Gulbranson,  a  Scandinavian.  She  was  an  heroic 
icicle  that  Wagner  himself  could  not  melt. 
Schumann-Heink,  as  Magdalene  in  Meister- 
singer y  was  simply  grotesque.  Van  Rooy's  Wal- 
ther  I  missed.  Hans  Richter  conducted  my 
favorite  of  the  Wagner  music  dramas,  the 
touching  and  pathetic  Nuremberg  romance,  and, 
to  my  surprise,  went  to  sleep  over  the  tempi.  He 
has  the  technique  of  the  conductor,  but  the 
elbow-grease  was  missing.  He  too  is  old,  but 
better  one  aged  Richter  than  a  caveful  of  spry 
Siegfried  Wagners! 

I  shan't  bother  you  any  more  as  to  details. 
Bayreuth  is  full  of  ghosts — the  very  trees  on  the 
terrace  whisper  the  names  of  Liszt  and  Wagner 
— but  Madame  Cosima  is  running  the  establish- 
ment for  all  there  is  in  it  financially — excuse  my 
slang — and  so  Bayreuth  is  deteriorating.  I  saw 
her,  Liszt's  daughter,  von  Biilow,  and  Wagner's 
wife — or  rather  widow — and  her  gaimt  frame, 
strong  if  angular  features,  gave  me  the  sight  of 
another  ghost  from  the  past.  Ghosts,  ghosts, 
the  world  is  getting  old  and  weary,  and  astride 
of  it  just  now  is  the  pessimist  Nietzsche,  who, 
disguised  as  a  herculean  boy,  is  deceiving  his 
worshippers  with  the  belief  that  he  is  young  and 
24 


OLD  FOGY  GOES  ABROAD 

a  preacher  of  the  jo3rful  doctrines  of  youth.  Be 
not  deceived,  he  is  but  another  veiled  prophet. 
His  mask  is  that  of  a  grinning  skeleton,  his  words 
are  bitter  with  death  and  deceit. 

I  stopped  over  at  Nuremberg  and  at  a  chamber 
concert  heard  Schubert's  quintet  for  piano  and 
strings.  Die  Forelle — and  although  I  am  no 
trout  fisher,  the  sweet,  boyish  loquacity,  the  pure 
music  made  my  heart  glad  and  I  wept. 

25 


ni 

THE    WAGNER    CRAZE 

THE  new  century  is  at  hand — I  am  not  one 
of  those  chronologically  stupid  persons 
who  beUeves  that  we  are  now  in  it — 
and  tottering  as  I  am  on  its  brink,  the  brink  of 
my  grave,  and  of  all  bom  during  1900,  it  might 
prove  interesting  as  well  as  profitable  for  me  to 
review  my  musical  past.  I  hear  the  young  folks 
cry  aloud:  "Here  comes  that  garrulous  old  chap 
again  with  his  car-load  of  musty  reminiscences! 
Even  if  Old  Fogy  did  study  with  Hummel,  is 
that  any  reason  why  we  should  be  bored  by  the 
fact?  How  can  a  skeleton  in  the  closet  tell  us 
anything  valuable  about  contemporary  music?" 
To  this  youthful  wail — and  it  is  a  real  one — I 
can  raise  no  real  objection.  I  am  an  Old  Fogy; 
but  I  know  it.  That  marks  the  difference  be- 
tween other  old  fogies  and  myself.  Some 
English  wit  recently  remarked  that  the  sadness 
of  old  age  in  a  woman  is  because  her  face  changes ; 
but  the  sad  part  of  old  age  in  a  man  is  that  his 
mind  does  not  change.  Well,  I  admit  we  septua- 
genarians are  set  in  our  ways.  We  have  lived 
our  lives,  felt,  suffered,  rejoiced,  and  perhaps 
grown  a  little  tolerant,  a  little  apathetic.  The 
26 


THE  WAGNER  CRAZE 

young  people  call  it  cynical ;  yet  it  is  not  C5niicism 
— only  a  large  charity  for  the  failings,  the  short- 
comings of  others.  So  what  I  am  about  to  say 
in  this  letter  must  not  be  set  down  as  either 
garrulity  or  senile  cynicism.  It  is  the  result 
of  a  half-century  of  close  observation,  and,  young 
folks,  let  me  tell  you  that  in  fifty  years  much 
music  has  gone  through  the  orifices  of  my  ears; 
many  artistic  reputations  made  and  lost! 

I  repeat,  I  have  witnessed  the  rise  and  fall  of 
so  many  musical  dynasties;  have  seen  men  like 
Wagner  emerge  from  northern  mists  and  die  in 
the  full  glory  of  a  reverberating  sunset.  And 
I  have  also  remarked  that  this  same  Richard  the 
Actor  touched  his  apogee  fifteen  years  ago  and 
more.  Already  signs  are  not  wanting  which 
show  that  Wagner  and  Wagnerism  is  on  the  de- 
cline. As  Swinburne  said  of  Walt  Whitman: 
*'A  reformer — but  not  founder."  This  holds 
good  of  Wagner,  who  closed  a  period  and  did 
not  begin  a  new  one.  In  a  word,  Wagner  was  a 
theater  musician,  one  cursed  by  a  craze  for  public 
applause — and  shekels — and  knowing  his  public, 
gave  them  more  operatic  music  than  any  Italian 
who  ever  wrote  for  barrel-organ  fame.  Wagner 
became  popular,  the  rage;  and  today  his  music, 
grown  stale  in  Germany,  is  being  fervently 
imitated,   nay,   burlesqued,   by   the   neo-ItaUan 

27 


OLD   FOGY 

school.  Come,  is  it  not  a  comical  situation,  this 
swapping  of  themes  among  the  nations,  this 
picking  and  stealing  of  styles?  And  let  me  tell 
you  that  of  all  the  Robber  Barons  of  music, 
Wagner  was  the  worst.  He  laid  hands  on  every 
score,  classical  or  modern,  that  he  got  hold  of. 

But  I  anticipate ;  I  put  the  coda  before  the  dog. 
When  Rienzi  appeared  none  of  us  were  de- 
ceived. We  recognized  our  Meyerbeer  dis- 
figured by  clumsy,  heavy  German  treatment. 
Wagner  had  been  to  the  opera  in  Paris  and  knew 
his  Meyerbeer;  but  even  Wagner  could  not  dis- 
tance Meyerbeer.  He  had  not  the  melodic 
invention,  the  orchestral  tact,  or  the  dramatic 
sense — at  that  time.  Being  a  bom  mimicker  of 
other  men,  a  very  German  in  industry,  and  a 
great  egotist,  he  began  casting  about  for  other 
models.  He  soon  found  one,  the  greatest  of  all 
for  his  purpose.  It  was  Weber — that  same 
Weber  for  whose  obsequies  Wagner  wrote  some 
funeral  music,  not  forgetting  to  use  a  theme  from 
the  Euryanthe  overture.  Weber  was  to  Wagner 
a  veritable  Golconda.  From  this  diamond  mine 
he  dug  out  tons  of  precious  stones;  and  some  of 
them  he  used  for  The  Flying  Dutchman.  We 
all  saw  then  what  a  parody  on  Weber  was  this 
pretentious  opera,  with  its  patches  of  purple,  its 
stale  choruses,  its  tiresome  recitatives.  The 
28 


THE  WAGNER  CRAZE 

latter  Wagner  fondly  imagined  were  but  pro- 
longed melodies.  Already  in  his  active,  but 
musically-barren  brain,  theories  were  seething. 
"How  to  compose  operas  without  music"  might 
be  the  title  of  all  his  prose  theoretical  works. 
Not  having  a  tail,  this  fox,  therefore,  solemnly 
argued  that  tails  were  useless  appanages.  You 
remember  your  ^sop!  Instead  of  melodic 
inspiration,  themes  were  to  be  used.  Instead 
of  broad,  flowing,  but  intelligible  themes,  a  mon- 
grel breed  of  recitative  and  parlando  was  to 
take  their  place. 

It  was  all  very  clever,  I  grant  you,  for  it  threw 
dust  in  the  public  eye — and  the  public  likes  to 
have  its  eyes  dusted,  especially  if  the  dust  is 
fine  and  flattering.  Wagner  proceeded  to  make 
it  so  by  labeling  his  themes,  leading  motives. 
Each  one  meant  something.  And  the  Germans, 
the  vainest  race  in  Eiurope,  rose  like  catfish  to  the 
bait.  Wagner,  in  effect,  told  them  that  his 
music  required  brains — Aha!  said  the  German, 
he  means  me;  that  his  music  was  not  cheap, 
pretty,  and  sensual,  but  spiritual,  lofty,  ideal — 
Oho!  cried  the  German,  he  means  me  again.  I 
am  ideal.  And  so  the  game  went  merrily  on. 
Being  the  greatest  egotist  that  ever  lived,  Wagner 
knew  that  this  music  could  not  make  its  way 
without  a  violent  polemic,  without  extraneous 
29 


OLD   FOGY 

advertising  aids.  So  he  made  a  big  row;  be- 
came socialist,  agitator,  exile.  He  dragged  into 
his  music  and  the  discussion  of  it,  art,  politics, 
literature,  philosophy,  and  religion.  It  is  a  well- 
known  fact  that  this  humbugging  comedian  had 
written  the  Ring  oj  the  Nibelungs  before  he  ab- 
sorbed the  Schopenhauerian  doctrines,  and  then 
altered  the  entire  scheme  so  as  to  imbue — for- 
sooth!— his  music  with  pessimism. 

Nor  was  there  ever  such  folly,  such  arrant 
"faking"  as  this!  What  has  philosophy,  religion, 
politics  to  do  with  operatic  music?  It  cannot  ex- 
press any  one  of  them.  Wagner,  clever  charla- 
tan, knew  this,  so  he  worked  the  leading-motive 
game  for  all  it  was  worth.  Realizing  the  in- 
definite nature  of  music,  he  gave  to  his  themes — 
most  of  them  borrowed  without  quotation  marks 
— such  titles  as  Love-Death;  Presentiment  of 
Death;  Cooking  motive — in  Siegfried;  Compact 
theme,  etc.,  etc.  The  list  is  a  lengthy  one.  And 
when  taxed  with  originating  all  this  futile  child's- 
play  he  denied  that  he  had  named  his  themes. 
Pray,  then,  who  did?  Did  von  Wolzogen?  Did 
Tappert?  They  worked  directly  under  his  direc- 
tion, put  forth  the  musical  lures  and  decoys  and 
the  ignorant  public  was  easily  bamboozled. 
Simply  mention  the  esoteric,  the  mysterious 
omens,  signs,  dark  designs,  and  magical  symbols, 
30 


THE  WAGNER  CRAZE 

and  you  catch  a  certain  class  of  weak-minded 
persons. 

Wagner  knew  this ;  knew  that  the  theater,  with 
its  lights,  its  scenery,  its  costumes,  orchestra, 
and  vocalizing,  was  the  place  to  hoodwink  the 
"cultured"  classes.  Having  a  pretty  taste  in 
digging  up  old  fables  and  love-stories,  he  satur- 
ated them  with  mysticism  and  far-fetched  musical 
motives.  If  The  Flying  Dutchman  is  absurd  in 
its  story^ — what  possible  interest  can  we  take  in 
the  Salvation  of  an  idiotic  mariner,  who  doesn't 
know  how  to  navigate  his  ship,  much  less  a  wife? 
— what  is  to  be  said  of  Lohengrin?  This  cheap 
Italian  music,  sugar-coated  in  its  sensuousness, 
the  awful  borrowings  from  Weber,  Marschner, 
Beethoven,  and  Gluck — and  the  story!  It  is 
called  ''mystic."  Why?  Because  it  is  not,  I 
suppose.  What  puerile  trumpery  is  that  refusal 
of  a  man  to  reveal  his  name!  And  Elsa!  Why 
not  Lot's  wife,  whose  ciuiosity  turned  her  into  a 
salt  trust! 

You  may  notice  just  here  what  the  Wagnerians 
are  pleased  to  call  the  Master's  "second"  manner. 
Rubbish!  It  is  a  return  to  the  Italians.  It  is  a 
graft  of  glistening  Italian  sensuality  upon  Wag- 
ner's strenuous  study  of  Beethoven's  and 
Weber's  orchestras.  Tannhduser  is  more  manly 
in  its  fiber.    But  the  style,  the  mixture  of  styles; 

31 


OLD   FOGY 

the  lack  of  organic  unity,  the  blustering  orches- 
tration, and  the  execrable  voice-killing  vocal 
writing!  The  Ring  is  an  amorphous  impossi- 
bility. That  is  now  critically  admitted.  It 
ruins  voices,  managers,  the  public  purse,  and 
our  patience.  Its  stories  are  indecent,  blas- 
phemous, silly,  absurd,  trivial,  tiresome.  To 
talk  of  the  Ring  and  Beethoven's  symphonies  is 
to  put  wind  and  wisdom  in  the  same  category. 
Wagner  vulgarized  Beethoven's  symphonic  meth- 
ods— noticeably  his  powers  of  development. 
Think  of  utilizing  that  magnificent  and  formid- 
able engine,  the  Beethoven  symphonic  method, 
to  accompany  a  tinsel  tale  of  garbled  Norse 
mythology  with  all  sorts  of  modem  affectations 
and  morbidities  introduced!  It  is  maddening  to 
any  student  of  pure,  noble  style.  Wagner's 
Byzantine  style  has  helped  corrupt  much  modem 
art. 

Tristan  und  Isolde  is  the  falsifying  of  all  the 
pet  Wagner  doctrines — Ah!  that  odious,  heavy, 
pompous  prose  of  Wagner.  In  this  erotic  comedy 
there  is  no  action,  nothing  happens  except  at  long 
intervals;  while  the  orchestra  never  stops  its 
garrulous  symphonizing.  And  if  you  prate  to 
me  of  the  wonderful  Wagner  orchestration  and 
its  eloquence,  I  shall  quarrel  with  you.  Why 
wonderful?    It  never  stops,  but  does  it  ever  say 

32 


THE  WAGNER  CRAZE 

anything?  Every  theme  is  butchered  to  death. 
There  is  endless  repetition  in  different  keys, 
with  different  instrumental  nuances,  yet  of  true, 
intellectual  and  emotional  mood-development 
there  is  no  trace;  short-breathed,  chippy,  choppy 
phrasing,  and  never  ten  bars  of  a  big,  straight- 
forward melody.  All  this  proves  that  Wagner 
had  not  the  power  of  sustained  thoughts  like 
Mozart  or  Beethoven.  And  his  orchestration, 
with  its  daubing,  its  overladen,  hysterical  color! 
What  a  humbug  is  this  sensualist,  who  masks 
his  pruriency  back  of  poetic  and  philosophical 
symbols.  But  it  is  always  easy  to  recognize  the 
cloven  foot.  The  headache  and  jaded  nerves 
we  have  after  a  night  with  Wagner  tell  the  story. 
I  admit  that  Die  Meistersinger  is  healthy. 
Only  it  is  not  art.  And  don't  forget,  my  children, 
that  Wagner's  prettiest  l3rrics  came  from  Schubert 
and  Schumann.  They  have  all  been  traced  and 
located.  I  need  not  insult  yoiu"  intelligence  by 
suggesting  that  the  Wotan  motive  is  to  be  found 
in  Schubert's  Wanderer.  If  you  wish  for  the 
Waldwehen  just  go  to  Spohr's  Consecration  of 
Tones  sjnnphony,  first  movement.  And  Weber 
also  furnishes  a  pleasing  list,  notably  the  Sword 
motive  from  the  Ring,  which  may  be  heard  in 
Ocean,  Thou  Mighty  Monster.  Parsifal  I  re- 
fuse to  discuss.    It  is  an  outrage  against  religion, 

33 


OLD   FOGY 

morals,  and  music.  However,  it  is  not  alone 
this  plagiarizing  that  makes  Wagner  so  unen- 
durable to  me.  It  is  his  continual  masking  as  the 
greatest  composer  of  his  century,  when  he  was 
only  a  clever  impostor,  a  theater-man,  a  wearer 
of  borrowed  plumage.  His  influence  on  music 
has  been  deplorably  evil.  He  has  melodrama- 
tized  the  art,  introduced  in  it  a  species  of  false, 
theatrical,  personal  feeling,  quite  foreign  to  its 
nature.  The  symphony,  not  the  stage,  is  the 
objective  of  musical  art.  Wagner — neither  com- 
poser nor  tragedian,  but  a  cunning  blend  of  both — 
diverted  the  art  to  his  own  uses.  A  great  force? 
Yes,  a  great  force  was  his,  but  a  dangerous  one. 
He  never  reached  the  heights,  but  was  always 
posturing  behind  the  foot-lights.  And  he  has 
left  no  school,  no  descendants.  Like  all  hy- 
brids, he  is  cursed  with  sterility.  The  twentieth 
century  will  find  Wagner  out.    Nunc  Dimittis! 

34 


IV 

IN   MOZARTLAND    WITH   OLD    FOGY 

THE  greatest  musician  the  world  has  yet 
known — Mozart.  The  greatest?  Yes, 
the  greatest;  greater  than  Bach,  because 
less  studied,  less  artificial,  professional,  and 
doctrinaire ;  greater  than  Beethoven,  because 
Mozart's  was  a  blither,  a  more  serene  spirit, 
and  a  spirit  whose  eyes  had  been  anointed  by 
beauty.  Beethoven  is  not  beautiful.  He  is 
dramatic,  powerful,  a  maker  of  storms,  a  subduer 
of  tempests;  but  his  speech  is  the  speech  of  a 
self-centered  egotist.  He  is  the  father  of  all 
the  modem  melomaniacs,  who,  looking  into  their 
own  souls,  write  what  they  see  therein — misery, 
corruption,  sUghting  selfishness,  and  ugliness. 
Beethoven,  I  say,  was  too  near  Mozart  not  to 
absorb  some  of  his  sanity,  his  sense  of  propor- 
tion, his  glad  outlook  upon  life ;  but  the  dissatis- 
fied peasant  in  the  composer  of  the  Eroica,  al- 
ways in  revolt,  would  not  allow  him  tranquillity. 
Now  is  the  fashion  for  soul  hurricanes,  these 
confessions  of  impotent  wrath  in  music. 

Beethoven  began  this  fashion ;  Mozart  did  not. 
Beethoven  had  himself  eternally  in  view  when  he 
wrote.    His  music  mirrors  his  wretched,  though 
35 


OLD   FOGY 

profound,  soul ;  it  also  mirrors  many  weaknesses. 
I  always  remember  Beethoven  and  Goethe 
standing  side  by  side  as  some  royal  nobody — I 
forget  the  name — went  by.  Goethe  doffed  his 
bonnet  and  stood  uncovered,  head  becomingly 
bowed.  Beethoven  folded  his  arms  and  made  no 
obeisance.  This  anecdote,  not  an  apochryphal 
one,  is  always  hailed  as  an  evidence  of  Beetho- 
ven's sturdiness  of  character,  his  rank  republican- 
ism, while  Goethe  is  slightly  sniffed  at  for  his 
snobbishness.  Yet  he  was  only  behaving  as  a 
gentleman  should.  If  Mozart  had  been  in 
Beethoven's  place,  how  courtly  would  have  been 
the  bow  of  the  little,  graceful  Austrian  com- 
poser! No,  Beethoven  was  a  boor,  a  clumsy  one, 
and  this  quality  abides  in  his  music — for  music 
is  always  the  man.  Put  Beethoven  in  America 
in  the  present  time  and  he  would  have  developed 
into  a  dangerous  anarchist.  Such  a  nature 
matures  rapidly,  and  a  century  might  have 
marked  the  evolution  from  a  despiser  of  kings 
to  a  hater  of  all  forms  of  restrictive  government. 
But  I'm  getting  in  too  deep,  even  for  myself,  and 
also  far  away  from  my  original  theme. 

Suffice   to   say  that   Bach   is   pedantic   when 

compared  to  Mozart,  and  Beethoven  unbeautiful. 

Some  day,  and  there  are  portents  on  the  musical 

horizon,  some  day,  I  repeat,  the  reign  of  beauty 

36 


IN  MOZARTLAND  WITH  OLD  FOGY 

in  art  will  reassert  its  sway.  Too  long  has 
Ugly  been  king,  too  long  have  we  listened  with 
half-cracked  ear-drums  to  the  noises  of  half-  ( 

cracked  men.    Already  the  new  generation  is^pC-^  • 
returning  to  Mozart— that  is,  to  music  for  music^s  P 
sake — to  the  Beautiful. 

I  went  to  Salzburg  deliberately.  I  needed  a 
sight  of  the  place,  a  glimpse  of  its  romantic  sur- 
roundings, to  still  my  old  pulse  jangled  out  of 
tune  by  the  horrors  of  Bayreuth.  Yes,  the 
truth  must  out.  I  went  to  Bayreuth  at  the 
express  suggestion  of  my  grandson,  Old  Fogy 
3d,  a  rip-roaring  young  blade  who  writes  for  a 
daily  paper  in  your  city.  What  he  writes  I 
know  not.  I  only  hope  he  lets  music  alone. 
He  is  supposed  to  be  an  authority  on  foot-ball 
and  Russian  caviar;  his  knowledge  of  the  latter 
he  acquired,  so  he  says,  in  the  great  Thirst  Belt 
of  the  United  States.  I  sincerely  hope  that 
Philadelphia  is  not  alluded  to!  I  am  also 
informed  that  the  lad  occasionally  goes  to  con- 
certs! Well,  he  begged  me  to  visit  Bajn-euth 
just  once  before  I  died.  We  argued  the  thing 
all  last  June  and  July  at  Dussek  Villa — you 
remember  my  little  lodge  up  in  the  wilds  of 
Wissahickon! — and  at  last  was  I,  a  sensible  old 
fellow  who  should  have  known  better,  persuaded 
to  sail  across  the  sea  to  a  horrible  town,  crowded 

37 


OLD   FOGY 

with  cheap  tourists,  vulgar  with  cheap  musicians, 
and  to  hear  what?  Why,  Wagner!  There  is 
no  need  of  telling  you  again  what  I  think  of  him. 
You  know!  I  really  think  I  left  home  to  escape 
the  terrible  heat,  and  I  am  quite  sure  that  I  left 
Bajrreuth  to  escape  the  terrible  music.  Apart 
from  the  fact  that  it  was  badly  sung  and  played 
— who  ever  does  play  and  sing  this  music  well? 
— it  was  written  by  Wagner,  and  though  I  am 
not  a  prejudiced  person — ahem! — I  cannot  stand 
noise  for  noise's  sake.  Art  for  art  they  call  it 
nowadays. 

I  fled  Bayreuth.  I  reached  Munich.  The 
weather  was  warm,  yet  of  a  deUghtful  balminess. 
I  was  happy.  Had  I  not  got  away  from  Wagner, 
that  odious,  bourgeois  name  and  man!  Munich, 
I  argued,  is  a  musical  city.  It  must  be,  for  it  is 
the  second  largest  beer-drinking  city  in  Germany. 
Therefore  it  is  given  to  melody.  Besides,  I  had 
read  of  Munich's  model  Mozart  performances. 
Here,  I  cried,  here  will  I  revel  in  a  lovely  at- 
mosphere of  art.  My  German  was  rather  rusty 
since  my  Weimar  days,  but  I  took  my  accent, 
with  my  courage,  in  both  hands  and  asked  a 
coachman  to  drive  me  to  the  opera-house. 
Through  green  and  luscious  lanes  of  foliage  this 
dumpy,  red-faced  scoundrel  drove;  by  the 
beautiful  Isar,  across  the  magnificent  Maximilian 
38 


IN  MOZARTLAND  WITH  OLD  FOGY 

bridge  over  against  the  classic  fagade  of  the 
Maximilineum.  Twisting  tortuously  about  this 
superb  edifice,  we  tore  along  another  leafy  road 
lined  on  one  side  by  villas,  on  the  other  bordered 
by  a  park.  Many  carriages  by  this  time  had 
joined  mine  in  the  chase.  What  a  happy  city, 
I  reflected,  that  enjoys  its  Mozart  with  such 
unanimity!  Turning  to  the  right  we  went  at  a 
grand  gallop  past  a  villa  that  I  recognized  as  the 
Villa  Stuck  from  the  old  pictures  I  had  seen;  past 
other  palaces  until  we  reached  a  vast  space  upon 
which  stood  a  marmoreal  pile  I  knew  to  be  the 
Mozart  theater.  What  a  glorious  city  is  Munich, 
to  thus  honor  its  Mozart!  And  the  building  as  I 
neared  it  resembled,  on  a  superior  scale,  the 
Bayreuth  bam.  But  this  one  was  of  marble, 
granite,  gold,  and  iron.  Up  to  the  esplanade,  up 
under  the  massive  portico  where  I  gave  my 
coachman  a  tip  that  made  his  mean  eyes  wink. 
Then  skirting  a  big  beadle  in  blue,  policemen, 
and  loungers,  I  reached  the  box-oflice. 

"Have  you  a  stall?"  I  inquired.  "Twenty 
marks"  ($5.00),  he  asked  m  turn.  "Phew!"  I 
said  aloud:  "Mozart  comes  high,  but  we  must 
have  him."  So  I  fetched  out  my  lean  purse, 
fished  up  a  gold  piece,  put  it  down,  and  then  an 
inspiration  overtook  me — I  kept  one  finger  on 
the  money.  "Is  it  Don  Giovanni  or  Magic 
39 


OLD   FOGY 

Flute  this  afternoon?"  I  demanded.  The  man 
stared  at  me  angrily.  "What  you  talk  about? 
It  is  Tristan  und  Isolde.  This  is  the  new 
Wagner  theater!"  I  must  have  yelled  loudly,  for 
when  I  recovered  the  big  beadle  was  slapping  my 
back  and  urging  me  earnestly  to  keep  in  the  open 
air.    And  that  is  why  I  went  to  Salzburg! 

Despite  Ba3rreuth,  despite  Munich,  despite 
Wagner,  I  was  soon  happy  in  the  old  haunts  of 
the  man  whose  music  I  adore.  I  went  through 
the  Mozart  collection,  saw  all  the  old  pictures, 
relics,  manuscripts,  and  I  reverently  fingered 
the  harpsichord,  the  grand  piano  of  the  master. 
Even  the  piece  of  "genuine  Court  Plaister" 
from  London,  and  numbered  42  in  the  catalogue, 
interested  me.  After  I  had  read  the  visitors* 
book,  inscribed  therein  my  own  humble  signa- 
ture, after  talking  to  death  the  husband  and  wife 
who  act  as  guardians  of  these  Mozart  treasures, 
I  visited  the  Mozart  platz  and  saw  the  statue, 
saw  Mozart's  residence,  and  finally — bliss  of 
bliss — ascended  the  Kapuzinberg  to  the  Mozart 
cottage,  where  the  Magic  Flute  was  finished. 

Later,  several  weeks  later,  when  the  Wagner 
municipal  delirium  had  passed,  I  left  Salzburg 
with  a  sad  heart  and  returned  to  Munich.  There 
I  was  allowed  to  bathe  in  Mozart's  music  and 
become  healed.  I  heard  an  excellent  perform- 
40 


IN  MOZARTLAND  WITH  OLD  FOGY 

ance  of  his  Cosi  Fan  Tutii  at  the  Residenz- 
theater,  an  ideal  spot  for  this  music.  With  the 
accompaniment  of  an  orchestra  of  thirty,  more  real 
music  was  made  and  sung  than  the  whole  Ring 
Cycle  contains.  Some  day,  after  my  death, 
without  doubt,  the  world  will  come  back  to  my 
way  of  thinking,  and  purge  its  eyes  in  the  Pierian 
spring  of  Mozart,  cleanse  its  vision  of  all  the  awful 
sights  walled  by  the  dissonantal  harmonies  of 
Beethoven,  Schtmiann,  Wagner,  and  Richard 
Strauss. 

I  fear  that  this  letter  will  enrage  my  grandson ; 
I  care  not.  If  he  writes,  do  not  waste  valuable 
space  on  his  "copy."  I  inclose  a  picture  of 
Mozart  that  I  picked  up  in  Salzburg.  If  you 
like  it,  you  have  my  permission  to  reproduce  it. 
I  am  here  once  more  in  Mozartland! 

41 


OLD    FOGY    DISCUSSES    CHOPIN 

SINCE  my  return  from  the  outskirts  of  Cam- 
den, N.  J.,  where  I  go  fishmg  for  planked 
shad  in  September,  I  have  been  busying 
myself  with  the  rearrangement  of  my  musical 
library,  truly  a  delectable  occupation  for  an  old 
man.  As  I  passed  through  my  hands  the 
various  and  beloved  volumes,  worn  by  usage 
and  the  passage  of  the  years,  I  pondered  after 
the  fashion  of  one  who  has  more  sentiment 
than  judgment;  I  said  to  myself: 

"Come,  old  fellow,  here  they  are,  these 
friends  of  the  past  forty  years.  Here  are  the 
yellow  and  bepenciled  Bach  Preludes  and 
FugueSj  the  precious  'forty-eight';  here  are 
the  Beethoven  Sonatas,  every  bar  of  which  is 
familiar;  here  are — yes,  the  Mozart,  Schubert, 
and  Schumann  Sonatas  [you  notice  that  I  am 
beginning  to  bracket  the  batches];  here  are 
Mendelssohn's  works,  highly  glazed  as  to  tech- 
nical surface,  pretty  as  to  sentiment.  Bach  seen 
through  the  lorgnette  of  a  refined,  thin,  narrow 
nature.  And  here  are  the  Chopin  compositions." 
The  murder  is  out — I  have  jumped  from  Bach 
and  Beethoven  to  Chopin  without  a  twinge  of 
42 


OLD  FOGY  DISCUSSES  CHOPIN 

my  critical  conscience.  Why?  I  hardly  know 
why,  except  that  I  was  thinking  of  that  mythical 
desert  island  and  the  usual  idiotic  question: 
What  composers  would  you  select  if  you  were  to 
be  marooned  on  a  South  Sea  Island? — you  know 
the  style  of  question  and,  alas!  the  style  of 
answer.  You  may  also  guess  the  composers  of 
my  selection.  And  the  least  of  the  three  in  the 
last  group  above  named  is  not  Chopin — Chopin, 
who,  as  a  piano  composer  pure  and  simple,  still 
ranks  his  predecessors,  his  contemporaries,  his 
successors. 

I  am  sure  that  the  brilliant  Mr.  Finck,  the 
erudite  Mr.  Krehbiel,  the  witty  Mr.  Henderson, 
the  judicial  Mr.  Aldrich,  the  phenomenal  Philip 
Hale,  have  told  us  and  will  tell  us  all  about  Cho- 
pin's life,  his  poetry,  his  technical  prowess,  his 
capacity  as  a  pedagogue,  his  reforms,  his  striking 
use  of  dance  forms.  Let  me  contribute  my 
humble  and  dusty  mite;  let  me  speak  of  a 
Chopin,  of  the  Chopin,  of  a  Chopin — pardon  my 
tedious  manner  of  address — who  has  most  ap- 
pealed to  me  since  my  taste  has  been  clarified 
by  long  experience.  I  know  that  it  is  customary 
to  swoon  over  Chopin's  languorous  muse,  to 
counterfeit  critical  raptures  when  his  name  is 
mentioned.  For  this  reason  I  dislike  exegetical 
comments  on  his  music.    Lives  of  Chopin  from 

43 


OLD   FOGY 

Liszt  to  Niecks,  Huneker,  Hadow,  and  the  rest 
are  either  too  much  given  over  to  dry-as-dust  or 
to  rhapsody.  I  am  a  teacher  of  the  pianoforte, 
that  good  old  keyboard  which  I  know  will  outlive 
all  its  mechanical  imitators.  I  have  assured  you 
of  this  fact  about  fifteen  years  ago,  and  I  expect  to 
hammer  away  at  it  for  the  next  fifteen  years  if  my 
health  and  your  amiabiUty  endure.  The  Chopin 
music  is  written  for  the  piano — a  truism! — so 
why  in  writing  of  it  are  not  critics  practical? 
It  is  the  practical  Chopin  I  am  interested  in  now- 
adays, not  the  poetic — for  the  latter  quality  will 
always  take  care  of  itself. 

Primarily  among  the  practical  considerations  of 
the  Chopin  music  is  the  patent  fact  that  only  a 
certain  section  of  his  music  is  studied  in  private 
and  played  in  public.  And  a  very  limited  section 
it  is,  as  those  who  teach  or  frequent  piano  recitals 
are  able  to  testify.  Why  should  the  D-flat 
Valse,  E-flat  and  G  minor  Nocturnes^  the  A-flat 
Ballade^  the  G  minor  Ballade,  the  B-flat  minor 
Scherzo,  the  Funeral  March,  the  two  G-flat 
Etudes,  or,  let  us  add,  the  C  minor,  the  F  minor 
and  C-sharp  minor  studies,  the  G  major  and 
D-flat  preludes,  the  A-flat  Polonaise — or,  worse 
still,  the  A  major  and  C-sharp  minor  Polonaises 
— the  B  minor,  B-flat  major  Mazurkas,  the 
A-flat  and  C-sharp  minor  Impromptus,  and  last, 

44 


OLD  FOGY  DISCUSSES  CHOPIN 

though  not  least,  the  Berceuse — why,  I  insist, 
should  this  group  be  selected  to  the  exclusion  of 
the  rest?  for,  all  told,  there  is  still  as  good  Chopin 
in  the  list  as  ever  came  out  of  it. 

I  know  we  hear  and  read  much  about  the 
"Heroic  Chopin",  and  the  "New  Chopin" — for- 
sooth!— and  "Chopin  the  Conqueror";  also  how 
to  make  up  a  Chopin  program — which  latter  in- 
evitably recalls  to  my  mind  the  old  crux:  how  to 
be  happy  though  hungry.  [Some  forms  of  this 
conundrum  lug  in  matrimony,  a  useless  intrusion.] 
How  to  present  a  program  of  Chopin's  neglected 
masterpieces  might  furnish  matter  for  afternoon 
lectures  now  devoted  to  such  negligible  musical 
debris  as  Parsifal's  neckties  and  the  chewing  gum 
of  the  flower  maidens. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  critics  are  not  to  blame. 
I  have  read  the  expostulations  of  Mr.  Finck 
about  the  untilled  fields  of  Chopin.  Yet  his 
favorite  Paderewski  plays  season  in  and  season 
out  a  selection  from  the  scheme  I  have  just 
given,  with  possibly  a  few  additions.  The  most 
versatile — and — also  delightful — Chopinist  is 
Pachmann.  From  his  very  first  afternoon  reci- 
tal at  old  Chickering  Hall,  New  York,  in  1890, 
he  gave  a  taste  of  the  unfamiliar  Chopin.  Joseffy, 
thrice  wonderful  wizard,  who  has  attained  to  the 
height  of  a  true  philosophic  Parnassus — he 
45 


OLD   FOGY 

only  plays  for  himself,  O  wise  Son  of  Light!— 
also  gives  at  long  intervals  fleeting  visions  of  the 
unknown  Chopin.  To  Pachmann  belongs  the 
honor  of  persistently  bringing  forward  to  our 
notice  such  gems  as  the  Allegro  de  Concert,  many 
new  mazurkas,  the  F  minor,  F  major — A  minor 
Ballades,  the  F-sharp  and  G-flat  Impromptus, 
the  B  minor  Sonata,  certain  of  the  Valses,  Fan- 
tasies, Krakowiaks,  Preludes,  Studies  and  Polo- 
naises— to  mention  a  few.  And  his  pioneer 
work  may  be  easily  followed  by  a  dozen  other 
lists,  all  new  to  concert-goers,  all  equally  inter- 
esting. Chopin  still  remains  a  sealed  book  to 
the  world,  notwithstanding  the  ink  spilled  over 
his  name  every  other  minute  of  the  clock's  busy 
traffic  with  Eternity. 

A  fair  moiety  of  this  present  chapter  could  be 
usurped  by  a  detailed  account  of  the  beauties  of 
the  Unheard  Chopin — you  see  I  am  emulating 
the  critics  with  my  phrase-making.  But  I  am  not 
the  man  to  accomplish  such  a  formidable  task. 
I  am  too  old,  too  disillusioned.  The  sap  of  a 
generous  enthusiasm  no  longer  stirs  in  my  veins. 
Let  the  young  fellows  look  to  the  matter — it  is 
their  affair.  However,  as  I  am  an  inveterate 
busybody  I  cannot  refrain  from  an  attempt  to 
enlist  your  sympathies  for  some  of  my  favorite 
Chopin. 

46 


OLD  FOGY  DISCUSSES  CHOPIN 

Do  you  know  the  E  major  Scherzo,  Op.  54^ 
with  its  skimming,  swallowlike  flight,  its  deUcate 
figviration,  its  evanescent  hintings  at  a  serious 
something  in  the  major  trio?  Have  you  ever 
heard  Pachmann  purl  through  this  exquisitely 
conceived,  contrived  and  balanced  composition, 
truly  a  classic?  Whaur  is  your  Willy  Mendels- 
sohn the  noo?  Or  are  you  acquainted  with  the 
G-sharp  minor  Prelude?  Do  you  play  the  E-flat 
Scherzo  from  the  B  minor  Sonata?  Have  you 
never  shed  a  furtive  tear — excuse  my  old-fash- 
ioned romanticism — over  the  bars  of  the  B  major 
Larghetto  in  the  same  work?  [The  last  move- 
ment is  pure  passage  writing,  yet  clever  as  only 
Chopin  knew  how  to  be  clever  without  being 
offensively  gaudy.] 

How  about  the  first  Scherzo  in  B  minor? 
You  play  it,  but  do  you  understand  its  ferocious 
irony?  [Oh,  author  of  Chopin:  the  Man  and  his 
Music,  what  sins  of  rhetoric  must  be  placed  at 
your  door!]  And  what  of  the  E-flat  minor 
Scherzo?  Is  it  merely  an  excuse  for  blacksmith 
art  and  is  the  following  finale  only  a  study  in 
imisons?  There  is  the  C-sharp  minor  Prelude. 
In  it  Brahms  is  anticipated  by  a  quarter  of  a 
century.  The  Polonaise  in  F-sharp  minor  was 
damned  years  ago  by  Liszt,  who  found  that  it 
contained  pathologic  states.    What  of  it?    It  is 

47 


OLD   FOGY 

Chopin's  masterpiece  in  this  form  and  for  that 
reason  is  seldom  played  in  public.  Why?  My 
children,  do  you  not  know  by  this  time  that  the 
garden  variety  of  pianoforte  virtuoso  will  play 
difficult  music  if  the  difficulties  be  technical  not 
emotional,  or  emotional  and  not  spiritual? 

The  F -sharp  minor  Polonaise  is  always 
drummed  on  the  keyboard  because  some  silly 
story  got  into  print  about  Chopin's  aunt  asking 
the  composer  for  a  picture  of  his  soul  battling 
with  the  soul  of  his  pet  foe,  the  Russians.  Mili- 
tant the  work  is  not,  as  swinging  as  are  its  resiUent 
rhythms:  granted  that  the  gloomy  repetitions 
betray  a  morbid  dwelling  upon  some  secret,  ex- 
asperating sorrow;  but  as  the  human  soul  never 
experiences  the  same  mood  twice  in  a  lifetime, 
so  Chopin  never  means  his  passages,  identical 
as  they  may  be,  to  be  repeated  in  the  same  mood- 
key.  Liszt,  Tausig,  and  Rubinstein  taught  us 
the  supreme  art  of  color  variation  in  the  repetition 
of  a  theme.  Paderewski  knows  the  trick;  so 
do  Joseflfy  and  Pachmann — the  latter's  pianissimi 
begin  where  other  men's  cease.  So  the  accusa- 
tion of  tonal  or  thematic  monotony  should  not 
be  brought  against  this  Polonaise.  Rather  let 
us  blame  our  imperfect  sympathies  and  slender 
stock  of  the  art  of  nuance. 

But  here  I  am  pinning  myself  down  to  one 
48 


OLD  FOGY  DISCUSSES  CHOPIN 

composition,  when  I  wish  to  touch  lightly  on 
so  many!  The  F  minor  Polonaise^  the  E-flat 
minor  Polonaise^  called  the  Siberian — why  I 
don't  know;  /  could  never  detect  in  its  mobile 
measures  the  clanking  of  convict  chains  or  the 
dreary  landscape  of  Siberia — might  be  played  by 
way  of  variety;  and  then  there  is  the  C  minor 
Polonaise^  which  begins  in  tones  of  epic  grandeur 
[go  it,  old  man,  you  will  be  applying  for  a  position 
on  the  Manayunk  Herbalist  soon  as  a  critic!] 
The  Nocturnes — are  they  all  familiar  to  you? 
The  F -sharp  minor  was  a  positive  novelty  a  few 
years  ago  when  Joseffy  exhumed  it,  while  the 
C -sharp  minor ^  with  its  strong  climaxes,  its 
middle  sections  so  evocative  of  Beethoven's 
Sonata  in  the  same  key — have  you  mastered  its 
content?  The  Preludes  are  a  perfect  field  for 
the  "prospector";  though  Essipoff  and  Arthur 
Friedheim  played  them  in  a  single  program. 
Nor  must  we  overlook  the  so-called  hackneyed 
valses,  the  tinkling  charm  of  the  one  in  G-flaty 
the  elegiac  quality  of  the  one  in  B  minor.  The 
Barcarolle  is  only  for  heroes.  So  I  do  not  set  it 
down  in  malice  against  the  student  or  the  every- 
day virtuosos  that  he — or  she — does  not  attempt 
it.  The  F  minor  Fantaisie,  I  am  sorry  to  say, 
is  beginning  to  be  tarnished  like  the  A-flat 
Ballade,  by  impious  hands.    It  is  not  for  weak- 

49 


OLD   FOGY 

lings;  nor  are  the  other  Fantaisies.  Why  not 
let  us  hear  the  Bolero  and  Tarantella,  not 
Chopin  at  his  happiest,  withal  Chopin.  Emil 
Sauer  made  a  success  of  other  brilUant  birdUke 
music  before  an  America  pubHc.  As  for  the 
Ballades,  I  can  no  longer  endure  any  but  Op.  38 
and  Op.  52.  Rosenthal  played  the  beautiful 
D-flat  Study  in  Les  Trois  nouvelles  Etudes  with 
signal  results.  It  is  a  valse  in  disguise.  And 
its  neighbors  in  A-flat  and  F  minor  are  Chopin 
in  his  most  winning  moods.  Who,  except 
Pachmann,  essays  the  G-flat  major  Impromptu — 
wrongfully  catalogued  as  Des  Dur  in  the  Klind- 
worth  edition?  To  be  sure,  it  resumes  many 
traits  of  the  two  preceding  Impromptus,  yet  is  it 
none  the  less  fascinating  music.  And  the 
Mazurkas — I  refuse  positively  to  discuss  at  the 
present  writing  such  a  fertile  theme.  I  am 
fatigued  already,  and  I  feel  that  my  antique 
vaporings  have  fatigued  you.  Next  month  I 
shall  stick  to  my  leathery  last,  like  the  musical 
shoemaker  that  I  am — I  shall  consider  to  some 
length  the  use  of  left-hand  passage  work  in  the 
Hummel  sonatas.  Or  shall  I  speak  of  Chopin 
again,  of  the  Chopin  mazurkas!  My  sour  bones 
become  sweeter  when  I  think  of  Chopin — ah, 
there  I  go  again!  Am  I,  too,  among  the  rhap- 
sodists? 

50 


VI 
MORE    ANENT    CHOPIN 

I  HAD  fully  intended  at  the  conclusion  of  my 
last  chapter  to  close  the  curtain  on  Chopin 
and  his  music,  for  I  agree  with  the  remark 
Deppe  once  made  to  Amy  Fay  about  the  ad- 
visability of  putting  Chopin  on  the  shelf  for  half 
a  century  and  studying  Mozart  in  the  interim. 
Bless  the  dear  Germans  and  their  thorough- 
ness! The  type  of  teacher  to  which  Deppe 
belonged  always  proceeded  as  if  a  pupil,  like  a 
cat,  had  nine  lives.  Fifty  years  of  Chopin  on  the 
shelf!  There's  an  idea  for  you.  At  the  con- 
clusion of  this  half  centiuy's  immurement 
what  would  the  world  say  to  the  Polish  com- 
poser's music?  That  is  to  say,  in  1955  the  im- 
known  inhabitants  of  the  musical  portion  of  this 
earth  would  have  sprung  upon  them  absolutely 
new  music.  The  excitement  would  be  colossal, 
colossal,  too,  would  be  the  advertising.  And 
then?  And  then  I  fancy  a  chorus  of  profoundly 
disappointed  lovers  of  the  tone  art.  Remember 
that  the  world  moves  in  fifty  years.  Perhaps 
there  would  be  no  longer  our  pianoforte,  our 
keyboard.    How    childish,    how    simple    would 

51 


OLD   FOGY 

sound  the  timid  little   Chopin  of  the  far-away 
nineteenth  century. 

In  the  turbulent  times  to  come  music  will 
have  lost  its  personal  flavor.  Instead  of  inter- 
pretative artists  there  will  be  gigantic  machinery 
capable  of  maniacal  displays  of  virtuosity; 
merely  dropping  a  small  coin  in  a  slot  will  sound 
the  most  abstruse  scores  of  Richard  Strauss — 
then  the  popular  and  bewhistled  music  maker. 
And  yet  it  is  difficult  for  us,  so  wedded  are  we  to 
that  tragic  delusion  of  earthly  glory  and  artistic 
immortality,  to  conjure  up  a  day  when  the  music 
of  Chopin  shall  be  stale  and  unprofitable  to  the 
hearing.  For  me  the  idea  is  inconceivable. 
Some  of  his  music  has  lost  interest  for  us,  par- 
ticularly the  early  works  modeled  after  Hummel. 
Ehlert  speaks  of  the  twilight  that  is  beginning  to 
steal  over  certain  of  the  nocturnes,  valses,  and 
fantasias.  Now  Hummel  is  quite  perfect  in  his 
way.  To  imitate  him,  as  Chopin  certainly  did, 
was  excellent  practice  for  the  younger  man, 
but  not  conducive  to  originality.  Chopin  soon 
found  this  out,  and  dropped  both  Hummel  and 
Field  out  of  his  scheme.  Nor  shall  I  insist  on 
the  earlier  impositions  being  the  weaker;  Op.  10 
contains  all  Chopin  in  its  twelve  studies.  The 
truth  is,  that  this  Chopin,  to  whom  has  been 
assigned  two  or  three  or  four  periods  and  styles 
52 


MORE  ANENT  CHOPIN 

and  manners  of  development,  sprang  from  the 
Minerva  head  of  music  a  full-fledged  genius. 
He  grew.  He  lived.  But  the  exquisite  art  was 
there  from  the  first.  That  it  had  a  "long  fore- 
ground" I  need  not  tell  you. 

What  compositions,  then,  would  our  mythic 
citizens  of  1955  prefer? — can't  you  see  them 
crowding  around  the  concert  grand  piano  listen- 
ing to  the  old-fashioned  strains  as  we  listen 
today  when  some  musical  antiquarian  gives  a 
recital  of  Scarlatti,  Couperin,  Rameau  on  a 
clavecin!  Still,  as  Mozart  and  Bach  are  en- 
durable now,  there  is  no  warrant  for  any  sup- 
position that  Chopin  would  not  be  tolerated  a 
half  century  hence.  Fancy  those  sprightly, 
spiritual,  and  very  national  dances,  the  mazurkas, 
not  making  an  impression!  Or  at  least  two  of  the 
ballades!  Or  three  of  the  nocturnes!  Not  to 
mention  the  polonaises,  preludes,  scherzos,  and 
etudes.  Simply  from  curiosity  the  other  night — 
I  get  so  tired  playing  checkers— I  went  through  all 
my  various  editions  of  Chopin — about  ten — look- 
ing for  trouble.  I  found  it  when  I  came  across 
five  mazurkas  in  the  key  of  C-sharp  minor.  I 
have  arrived  at  the  conclusion  that  this  was  a 
favorite  tonality  of  the  Pole.    Let  us  see. 

Two  studies  in  Op.  10  and  25,  respectively;  the 
Fantaisie- Impromptu,  Op.  66;  five  Mazurkas, 
53 


OLD   FOGY 

above  mentioned;  one  Nocturne^  Op.  27 y  No.  1; 
one  Polonaise,  Op.  26 y  No.  1;  one  Prelude,  Op. 
45;  one  Scherzo,  Op.  39;  and  a  short  second 
section,  a  cantabile  in  the  E  major  Scherzo,  Op. 
54;  one  Valse,  Op.  64,  No.  2— are  there  any  more 
in  C-sharp  minor?  If  there  are  I  cannot  recall 
them.  But  this  is  a  good  showing  for  one  key, 
and  a  minor  one.  Little  wonder  Chopin  v/as 
pronounced  elegiac  in  his  tendencies — C-sharp 
minor  is  a  mournful  key  and  one  that  soon  de- 
velops a  cloying,  morbid  quahty  if  too  much 
insisted  upon. 

The  mazurkas  are  worthy  specimens  of  their 
creator's  gift  for  varying  not  only  a  simple  dance 
form,  but  also  in  juggling  with  a  simple  melodic 
idea  so  masterfully  that  the  hearer  forgets  he  is 
hearing  a  three-part  composition  on  a  keyboard. 
Chopin  was  a  magician.  The  first  of  the  Mazur- 
kas in  C-sharp  minor  bears  the  early  Op.  6,  No.  2. 
By  no  means  representative,  it  is  nevertheless 
interesting  and  characteristic.  That  brief  intro- 
duction with  its  pedal  bass  sounds  the  rh3rthmic 
life  of  the  piece.  I  like  it ;  I  like  the  dance  proper ; 
I  like  the  major — ^you  see  the  peasant  girls  on  the 
green  footing  away — and  the  ending  is  full  of  a 
sad  charm.  Op.  30,  No.  4,  the  next  in  order,  is 
bigger  in  conception,  bigger  in  workmanship. 
It  is  not  so  cheerful,  perhaps,  as  its  predecessor 

54 


MORE  ANENT  CHOPIN 

in  the  same  key;  the  heavy  basses  twanging  in 
tenths  like  a  contrabasso  are  intentionally  mono- 
tone in  effect.  There  is  defiance  and  despair 
in  the  mood.  And  look  at  the  line  before  the 
last — those  consecutive  fifths  and  sevenths  were 
not  placed  there  as  a  whim;  they  mean  some- 
thing. Here  is  a  mazurka  that  will  be  heard 
later  than  1955!  By  the  way,  while  you  are 
loitering  through  this  Op.  30  do  not  neglect  No.  3, 
the  stunning  specimen  in  D-flat.  It  is  my 
favorite  mazurka. 

Now  let  us  hurry  on  to  Op.  41,  No.  1.  It  well 
repays  careful  study.  Note  the  grip  our  com- 
poser has  on  the  theme,  it  bobs  up  in  the  middle 
voices ;  it  comes  thundering  at  the  close  in  octave 
and  chordal  unisons,  it  rumbles  in  the  bass  and  is 
persistently  asserted  by  the  soprano  voice.  Its 
scale  is  unusual,  the  atmosphere  not  altogether 
cheerful.  Chopin  could  be  depressingly  pessi- 
mistic at  times.  Op.  50,  No.  J,  shows  how 
closely  the  composer  studied  his  Bach.  It  is  by 
all  odds  the  most  elaborately  worked  out  of  the 
series,  difficult  to  play,  difficult  to  grasp  in  its 
rather  disconnected  procession  of  moods.  To 
me  it  has  a  clear  ring  of  exasperation,  as  if 
Chopin  had  lost  interest,  but  perversely  deter- 
mined to  finish  his  idea.  As  played  by  Pach- 
mann,  we  get  it  in  all  its  peevish,  sardonic  humors, 

55 


OLD    FOGY 

especially  if  the  audience,  or  the  weather,  or  the 
piano  seat  does  not  suit  the  fat  little  blackbird 
from  Odessa.  Op.  63,  No.  3,  ends  this  hst  of 
mazurkas  in  C-sharp  minor.  In  it  Chopin  has 
limbered  up,  his  mood  is  freer,  melancholy 
as  it  is.  Louis  Ehlert  wrote  of  this:  "A  more 
perfect  canon  in  the  octave  could  not  have  been 
written  by  one  who  had  grown  gray  in  the 
learned  arts."  Those  last  few  bars  prove  that 
Chopin — they  once  called  him  amateurish  in  his 
harmonies! — could  do  what  he  pleased  in  the 
contrapuntal  line. 

Shall  I  continue?  Shall  I  insist  on  the  ob- 
vious; hammer  in  my  truisms!  It  may  be  pos- 
sible that  out  here  on  the  Wissahickon — where 
the  summer  hiccoughs  grow — that  I  do  not  get 
all  the  news  of  the  musical  world.  Yet  I  vainly 
scan  piano  recital  programs  for  such  numbers  as 
those  C-sharp  minor  mazurkas,  for  the  F  minor 
Ballade,  for  that  beautiful  and  extremely  original 
Ballade  Op.  38  which  begins  in  F  and  ends  in  A 
minor.  Isn't  there  a  legend  to  the  effect  that 
Schmnann  heard  Chopin  play  his  Ballade  in 
private  and  that  there  was  no  stormy  middle 
measures?  I've  forgotten  the  source,  possibly 
one  of  the  greater  Chopinist's — or  Chopine-ists, 
as  they  had  it  in  Paris.  What  a  stumbling-block 
that  A  minor  explosion  was  to  audiences  and 
56 


MORE  ANENT  CHOPIN 

students  and  to  pianists  themselves.  "Too  wild, 
too  wild!"  I  remember  hearing  the  old  guard 
exclaim  when  Rubinstein,  after  miraculously 
prolonging  the  three  A's  with  those  singing 
fingers  of  his,  not  forgetting  the  pedals,  smashed 
down  the  keyboard,  gobbling  up  the  sixteenth 
notes,  not  in  phrases,  but  pages.  How  grandly 
he  rolled  out  those  bass  scales,  the  chords  in  the 
treble  transformed  into  a  Cantus  Firmus.  Then, 
his  Calmuck  features  all  afire,  he  would  begin 
to  smile  gently  and  lo! — the  tiny,  little  tune,  as  if 
children  had  unconsciously  composed  it  at  play! 
The  last  page  was  carnage.  Port  Arthur  was 
stormed  and  captured  in  every  bar.  What  a 
pianist,  what  an  artist,  what  a  man! 

I  suppose  it  is  because  my  imagination  weakens 
with  my  years — remember  that  I  read  in  the  daily 
papers  the  news  of  Chopin's  death!  I  do  long  for 
a  definite  program  to  be  appended  to  the  F -major 
Ballade.  Why  not  offer  a  small  prize  for  the 
best  program  and  let  me  be  judge?  I  have  also 
reached  the  time  of  life  when  the  A-flat  Ballade 
affects  my  nerves,  just  as  Liszt  was  affected 
when  a  pupil  brought  for  criticism  the  G  minor 
Ballade.  Preserve  me  from  the  Third  Ballade! 
It  is  winning,  gracious,  delicate,  capricious, 
melodic,  poetic,  and  what  not,  but  it  has  gone  to 
meet  the  D-ftat  Valse  and  E-flat  Nocturne — as 
57 


OLD   FOGY 

the  obituaries  say.  The  fourth,  the  F  minor 
Ballade— ah^  you  touch  me  in  a  weak  spot. 
Sticking  for  over  a  half  century  to  Bach  so 
closely,  I  imagine  that  the  economy  of  thematic 
material  and  the  ingeniously  spun  fabric  of  this 
Ballade  have  made  it  my  pet.  I  do  not  dwell 
upon  the  loveliness  of  the  first  theme  in  F  minor, 
or  of  that  melodious  approach  to  it  in  the  major. 
I  am  speaking  now  of  the  composition  as  a 
whole.  Its  themes  are  varied  with  consummate 
ease,  and  you  wonder  at  the  comers  you  so 
easily  turn,  bringing  into  view  newer  horizons; 
fresh  and  striking  landscapes.  When  you  are 
once  afloat  on  those  D-flat  scales,  four  pages 
from  the  end  nothing  can  stop  your  progress. 
Every  bar  slides  nearer  and  nearer  to  the  climax, 
which  is  seemingly  chaos  for  the  moment. 
After  that  the  air  clears  and  the  whole  work 
soars  skyward  on  mighty  pinions.  I  quite  agree 
with  those  who  place  in  the  same  category  the 
F  minor  Fantaisie  with  this  Ballade.  And  it  is 
not  much  played.  Nor  can  the  mechanical 
instruments  reproduce  its  nuances,  its  bewilder- 
ing pathos  and  passion.  I  see  the  musical  mob 
of  1955  deeply  interested  when  the  Paderewski 
of  those  days  puts  it  on  his  program  as  a  gigantic 
novelty! 
You  see,  here  I  have  been  blazing  away  at  the 
58 


MORE  ANENT  CHOPIN 

same  old  target  again,  though  we  had  agreed  to 
drop  Chopin  last  month.  I  can't  help  it.  I  felt 
choked  ofif  in  my  previous  article  and  now  the  dam 
has  overflowed,  though  I  hope  not  the  reader's! 
While  I  think  of  it,  some  one  wrote  me  asking  if 
Chopin's  first  Sonata  in  C  minora  Op.  4,  was 
worth  the  study.  Decidedly,  though  it  is  as  dry 
as  a  Kalkbrenner  Sonata  for  Sixteen  Pianos  and 
forty-five  hands.  The  form  clogged  the  hght  of 
the  composer.  Two  things  are  worthy  of  notice 
in  many  pages  choked  with  notes:  there  is  a 
menuet,  the  only  essay  I  recall  of  Chopin's 
in  this  graceful,  artificial  form;  and  the  Larghetto 
is  in  I  time — also  a  novel  rhythm,  and  not  very 
grateful.  How  Chopin  reveled  when  he  reached 
the  B-flat  minor  and  B  minor  Sonatas  and  threw 
formal  physic  to  the  dogs!  I  had  intended  de- 
voting a  portion  of  this  chapter  to  the  difference 
of  old-time  and  modern  methods  in  piano  teach- 
ing.   Alas!  my  unruly  pen  ran  away  with  me! 

59 


VII 
PIANO  PLAYING  TODAY  AND  YESTERDAY 

HOW  to  listen  to  a  teacher!  How  to  profit 
by  his  precepts!  Better  still — How  to 
practice  after  he  has  left  the  house! 
There  are  three  titles  for  essays,  pedagogic  and 
otherwise,  which  might  be  supplemented  by  a 
fourth :  How  to  pay  promptly  the  music  master's 
bills.  But  I  do  not  propose  indulging  in  any 
such  generalities  this  beautiful  day  in  late  winter. 
First,  let  me  rid  the  minds  of  my  readers  of  a 
delusion.  I  am  no  longer  a  piano  teacher,  nor 
do  I  give  lessons  by  mail.  I  am  a  very  old  fellow, 
fond  of  chatting,  fond  of  reminiscences ;  with  the 
latter  I  bore  my  listeners,  I  am  sure.  Neverthe- 
less, I  am  not  old  in  spirit,  and  I  feel  the  liveliest 
curiosity  in  matters  pianistic,  matters  musical. 
Hence,  this  month  I  will  make  a  hasty  comparison 
between  new  and  old  fashions  in  teaching  the 
pianoforte.  If  you  have  patience  with  me  you 
may  hear  something  of  importance;  otherwise, 
if  there  is  skating  down  your  way  don't  miss  it — 
fresh  air  is  always  healthier  than  esthetic 
gabbling. 
Do  they  teach  the  piano  better  in  the  twentieth 
60 


PIANO  PLAYING  TODAY  AND  YESTERDAY 

century  than  in  the  nmeteenth?  Yes,  absolutely 
yes.  When  a  young  man  survived  the  **old 
fogy"  methods  of  the  fifties,  sixties  and  seven- 
ties of  the  past  century,  he  was,  it  cannot  be 
gainsaid,  an  excellent  artist.  But  he  was,  as  a 
rule,  the  survival  of  the  fittest.  For  one  of  him 
successful  there  were  one  thousand  failures. 
Strong  hands,  untiring  patience  and  a  deeply 
musical  temperament  were  needed  to  withstand 
the  absurd  soulless  drilling  of  the  fingers. 
Unduly  prolonged,  the  immense  amount  of  dry 
studies,  the  antique  disregard  of  fore-arm  and 
upper-arm  and  the  comparatively  restricted 
repertory — well,  it  was  a  stout  body  and  a  robust 
musical  temperament  that  rose  superior  to  such 
cramping  pedagogy.  And  then,  too,  the  ideals 
of  the  pianist  were  quite  different.  It  is  only  in 
recent  years  that  tone  has  become  an  important 
factor  in  the  scheme — thanks  to  Chopin,  Thal- 
berg  and  Liszt.  In  the  early  sixties  we  believed 
in  velocity  and  clearness  and  brilliancy.  Kalk- 
brenner,  Herz,  Dreyschock,  Ddhler,  Thalberg — 
those  were  the  lively  boys  who  patrolled  the 
keyboard  like  the  north  wind — brisk  but  chilly. 
I  must  add  that  the  most  luscious  and  melting 
tone  I  ever  heard  on  the  piano  was  produced  by 
Thalberg  and  after  him  Henselt.  Today  Pade- 
rewski  is  the  best  exponent  of  their  school;  of 
6i 


OLD   FOGY 

course,  modified  by  modem  ideas  and  a  Slavic 
temperament. 

But  now  technic  no  longer  counts.  Be  ye  as 
fleet  as  Rosenthal  and  as  pure  as  Pachmann — 
in  a  tonal  sense — ye  will  not  escape  comparison 
with  the  mechanical  pianist.  It  was  their 
astounding  accuracy  that  extorted  from  Eugen 
d'Albert  a  confession  made  to  a  friend  of  mine 
just  before  he  sailed  to  this  country  last  month: 

"A  great  pianist  should  no  longer  bother 
himself  about  his  technic.  Any  machine  can 
beat  him  at  the  game.  What  he  must  excel  in 
is — interpretation  and  tone." 

Rosenthal,  angry  that  a  mere  contrivance 
manipulated  by  a  salesman  could  beat  his  speed, 
has  taken  the  slopes  of  Parnassus  by  storm. 
He  can  play  the  Liszt  Don  Juan  paraphrase 
faster  than  any  machine  in  existence.  (I  refer 
to  the  drinking  song,  naturally.)  But  how  few  of 
us  have  attained  such  transcendental  technic? 
None  except  Rosenthal,  for  I  really  believe  if 
Karl  Tausig  would  return  to  earth  he  would  be 
dazzled  by  Rosenthal's  performances — say,  for 
example,  of  the  Brahms-Paganini  Studies  and, 
Liszt,  in  his  palmy  days,  never  had  such  a  technic 
as  Tausig's;  while  the  latter  was  far  more  musical 
and  intellectual  than  Rosenthal.  Other  days, 
other  ways! 

62 


PIANO  PLAYING  TODAY  AND  YESTERDAY 

So  tone,  not  technic  alone,  is  our  shibboleth. 
How  many  teachers  realize  this?  How  many 
still  commit  the  sin  of  transforming  their  pupils 
into  machines,  developing  muscle  at  the  expense 
of  music!  To  be  sure,  some  of  the  old  teachers 
considered  the  second  F  minor  sonata  of  Bee- 
thoven the  highest  peak  of  execution  and  confined 
themselves  to  teaching  Mozart  and  Field,  Cramer 
and  Mendelssohn,  with  an  occasional  fantasia  by 
Thalberg — the  latter  to  please  the  proud  papa 
after  dessert.  Schumann  was  not  understood; 
Chopin  was  misunderstood;  and  Liszt  was 
anathema.  Yet  we  often  heard  a  sweet,  singing 
tone,  even  if  the  mechanism  was  not  above  the 
normal.  I  am  sure  those  who  had  the  pleasure  of 
listening  to  WUliam  Mason  will  recall  the  ex- 
quisite purity  of  his  tone,  the  limpidity  of  his 
scales,  the  neat  finish  of  his  phrasing.  Old  style, 
I  hear  you  say!  Yes,  old  and  ever  new,  because 
approaching  more  nearly  perfection  than  the 
splashing,  floundering,  fly-by-night,  hysterical, 
smash-the-ivories  school  of  these  latter  days. 
Music,  not  noise— that's  what  we  are  after  in 
piano  playing,  the  higher  piano  playing.  All  the 
rest  is  pianola-istic! 

Singularly  enough,  with  the  shifting  of  techni- 
cal standards,  more  simplicity  reigns  in  methods 
of  teaching  at  this  very  moment.    The  reason 

63 


OLD   FOGY 

is  that  so  much  more  is  expected  in  variety  of 
technic;  therefore,  no  unnecessary  time  can  be 
spared.  If  a  modern  pianist  has  not  at  fifteen 
mastered  all  the  tricks  of  finger,  wrist,  fore-arm 
and  upper-arm  he  should  study  bookkeeping  or 
the  noble  art  of  football.  Immense  are  the 
demands  made  upon  the  memory.  Whole  vol- 
imies  of  fugues,  sonatas  of  Chopin,  Liszt,  Schu- 
mann and  the  new  men  are  memorized,  as  a 
matter  of  course.  Better  wrong  notes,  in  the 
estimation  of  the  more  superficial  musical  public, 
than  playing  with  the  music  on  the  piano  desk. 
And  then  to  top  all  these  terrible  things,  you  must 
have  the  physique  of  a  sailor,  the  nerves  of  a 
woman,  the  impudence  of  a  prize-fighter,  and  the 
humility  of  an  innocent  child.  Is  it  any  wonder 
that,  paradoxical  as  it  may  sound,  there  are  fewer 
great  pianists  today  in  public  than  there  were 
fifty  years  ago,  yet  ten  times  as  many  pianists! 

The  big  saving,  then,  in  the  pianistic  curriculum 
is  the  dropping  of  studies,  finger  and  otherwise. 
To  give  him  his  due,  Von  Bulow — as  a  pianist 
strangely  inimical  to  my  taste — was  among  the 
first  to  boil  down  the  number  of  etudes.  He  did 
this  in  his  famous  preface  to  the  Cramer  Studies. 
Nevertheless,  his  list  is  too  long  by  half.  Who 
plays  Moscheles?  Who  cares  for  more  than  four 
or  six  of  the  Clementi,  for  a  half  dozen  of  the 
64 


PIANO  PLAYING  TODAY  AND  YESTERDAY 

Cramer?  I  remember  the  consternation  among 
certain  teachers  when  Deppe  and  Raif,  with  his 
dumb  thumb  and  blind  fingers,  abolished  all  the 
classic  piano  studies.  Teachers  like  Constantine 
von  Sternberg  do  the  same  at  this  very  hour, 
finding  in  the  various  technical  figures  of  com- 
positions all  the  technic  necessary.  This  method 
is  infinitely  more  trying  to  the  teacher  than  the 
old-fashioned,  easy-going  ways.  "Play  me  No. 
22  for  next  time!"  was  the  order,  and  in  a 
soporific  manner  the  pupil  waded  through  all 
the  studies  of  all  the  Technikers.  Now  the 
teacher  must  invent  a  new  study  for  every  new 
piece — with  Bach  on  the  side.  Always  Bach! 
Please  remember  that.  B-a-c-h — Bach.  Your 
daily  bread,  my  children. 

We  no  longer  play  Mozart  in  public — except 
JosefiFy.  I  was  struck  recently  by  something 
Fannie  Bloomfield  Zeisler  said  in  this  matter  of 
Mozart.  Yes,  Mozart  is  more  diflicult  than 
Chopin,  though  not  so  difficult  as  Bach.  Mozart 
is  so  naked  and  unafraid!  You  must  touch  the 
right  key  or  forever  afterward  be  condemned  by 
your  own  blundering.  Let  me  add  here  that 
I  heard  Fannie  Bloomfield  play  the  little  sonata, 
wrongfully  called  facile^  when  she  was  a  tiny, 
ox-eyed  girl  of  six  or  seven.  It  was  in  Chicago 
in  the  seventies.  Instead  of  asking  for  candy 
65 


OLD   FOGY 

afterwards  she  begged  me  to  read  her  some 
poetry  of  Shelley  or  something  by  Schopenhauer! 
Veritably  a  fabulous  child! 

Let  me  add  three  points  to  the  foregoing  state- 
ments: First,  Joseffy  has  always  been  rather 
skeptical  of  too  few  piano  studies.  His  argu- 
ment is  that  endurance  is  also  a  prime  factor  of 
technic,  and  you  cannot  compass  endurance  with- 
out you  endure  prolonged  finger  drills.  But  as 
he  has  since  composed— literally  composed — the 
most  extraordinary  time-saving  book  of  technical 
studies  {School  of  Advanced  Piano  Playing), 
I  suspect  the  great  virtuoso  has  dropped  from  his 
list  all  the  Heller,  Hiller,  Czemy,  Haberbier, 
Cramer,  Clementi  and  Moscheles.  Certainly 
his  Exercises — as  he  meekly  christens  them — 
are  multum  in  parvo.  They  are  my  daily 
recreation. 

The  next  point  I  would  have  you  remember  is 
this:  The  morning  hours  are  golden.  Never 
waste  them,  the  first  thing,  never  waste  your  sleep- 
freshened  brain  on  mechanical  finger  exercise. 
Take  up  Bach,  if  you  must  unlimber  your  fingers 
and  your  wits.  But  even  Bach  should  be  kept 
for  afternoon  and  evening.  I  shall  never  forget 
Moriz  Rosenthal's  amused  visage  when  I,  in  the 
innocence  of  my  eighteenth  century  soul,  put  this 
question  to  him:  "When  is  the  best  time  to 
66 


PIANO  PLAYING  TODAY  AND  YESTERDAY 

study  etudes?"  "If  you  must  study  them  at  all, 
do  so  after  your  day's  work  is  done.  By  your 
day's  work  I  mean  the  mastery  of  the  sonata  or 
piece  you  are  working  at.  When  your  brain  is 
clear  you  can  compass  technical  difficulties  much 
better  in  the  morning  than  the  evening.  Don't 
throw  away  those  hours.  Any  time  will  do  for 
gymnastics."  Now  there  is  something  for  stub- 
born teachers  to  put  in  their  pipes  and  smoke. 

My  last  injunction  is  purely  a  mechanical 
one.  All  the  pianists  I  have  heard  with  a  beauti- 
ful tone — Thalberg,  Henselt,  Liszt,  Tausig, 
Heller — yes,  Stephen  of  the  pretty  studies — 
Rubinstein,  Joseffy,  Paderewski,  Pachmann  and 
Essipoff,  sat  low  before  the  keyboard.  When 
you  sit  high  and  the  wrists  dip  downward  your 
tone  will  be  dry,  brittle,  hard.  Doubtless  a  few 
pianists  with  abnormal  muscles  have  escaped  this, 
for  there  was  a  time  when  octaves  were  played 
with  stiff  wrists  and  rapid  tempo.  Both  things 
are  an  abomination,  and  the  exception  here  does 
not  prove  the  rule.  Pianists  like  Rosenthal, 
Busoni,  Friedheim,  d'Albert,  Von  Biilow,  all  the 
Great  Germans  (Germans  are  not  bom,  but  are 
made  piano  players),  Carreiio,  Aus  der  Ohe, 
Krebs,  Mehlig  are  or  were  artists  with  a  hard 
tone.  As  for  the  much-vaunted  Leschetizky 
method  I  can  only  say  that  I  have  heard  but  two 
67 


OLD   FOGY 

of  his  pupils  whose  tone  was  not  hard  and  too 
brilliant.  Paderewski  was  one  of  these.  Pade- 
rewski  confessed  to  me  that  he  learned  how  to 
play  billiards  from  Leschetizky,  not  piano; 
though,  of  course,  he  will  deny  this,  as  he  is  very 
loyal.  The  truth  is  that  he  learned  more  from 
Essipoff  than  from  her  then  husband,  the  much- 
married  Theodor  Leschetizky. 

Pachmann,  once  at  a  Dohn^nyi  recital  in  New 
York,  called  out  in  his  accustomed  frank  fashion : 
"He  sits  too  high."  It  was  true.  Dohn^yi's 
touch  is  as  hard  as  steel.  He  sat  over  the  key- 
board and  played  down  on  the  keys,  thus  strik- 
ing them  heavily,  instead  of  pressing  and  mould- 
ing the  tone.  Pachmann's  playing  is  a  notable 
example  of  plastic  beauty.  He  seems  to  dip  his 
hands  into  musical  liquid  instead  of  touching 
inanimate  ivory,  and  bone,  wood,  and  wire. 
Remember  this  when  you  begin  your  day's 
work:  Sit  so  that  your  hand  is  on  a  level  with, 
never  below,  the  keyboard ;  and  don't  waste  your 
morning  freshness  on  dull  finger  gjmanastics! 
Have  I  talked  you  hoarse? 
68 


vm 

FOUR    FAMOUS    VIRTUOSOS 

SUCH  a  month  of  dissipation!  You  must 
know  that  at  my  time  of  hf e  I  run  down  a 
bit  every  spring,  and  our  family  physician 
prescribed  a  course  of  scale  exercises  on  the 
Boardwalk  at  Atlantic  City,  and  after  that — 
New  York,  for  Lenten  recreation!  Now,  New 
York  is  not  quiet,  nor  is  it  ever  Lenten.  A 
crowded  town,  huddled  on  an  island  far  too  small 
for  its  inconceivably  uncivilized  population,  its 
inhabitants  can  never  know  the  value  of  leisure 
or  freedom  from  noise.  Because  he  is  always 
in  a  hurry  a  New  York  man  fancies  that  he  is  in- 
tellectual. The  consequences  artistically  are 
dire.  New  York  boasts — yes,  literally  boasts — 
the  biggest,  noisiest,  and  poorest  orchestra  in 
the  country.  I  refer  to  the  Philharmonic  Society, 
with  its  wretched  wood-wind,  its  mediocre  brass, 
and  its  aggregation  of  rasping  strings.  All  the 
vaudeville  and  lightning-change  conductors  have 
not  put  this  band  on  a  level  with  the  Boston,  the 
Philadelphia,  or  the  Chicago  organizations.  Nor 
does  the  opera  please  me  much  better.  Noise, 
69 


OLD   FOGY 

at  the  expense  of  music;  quantity,  instead  of 
quality;  all  the  tempi  distorted  and  fortes  ex- 
aggerated, so  as  to  make  effect.  Effect,  effect, 
effect!  That  is  the  ideal  of  New  York  conduc- 
tors. This  coarsening,  cheapening,  and  mag- 
nification of  details  are  resultants  of  the  restless, 
uncomfortable,  and  soulless  life  of  the  much 
overrated  Manhattan. 

Naturally,  I  am  a  Philadelphia!!,  and  my  stric- 
tures will  be  set  down  to  old  fogyism.  But  show 
me  a  noise-loving  city  and  I  will  show  you  an 
inartistic  one.  Schopenhauer  was  right  in  this 
matter ;  insensibiUty  to  noise  argues  a  less  refined 
organism.  And  New  York  may  spend  a  million 
of  money  on  music  every  season,  and  still  it  is 
not  a  musical  city.  The  opera  is  the  least  sign; 
opera  is  a  social  function — sometimes  a  circus, 
never  a  temple  of  art.  The  final,  the  infaUible 
test  is  the  maintenance  of  an  orchestra.  New 
York  has  no  permanent  orchestra;  though  there 
is  an  attempt  to  make  of  the  New  York  Sym- 
phony Society  a  worthy  rival  to  the  Philadelphia 
and  Boston  orchestras.  So  much  for  my  enjoy- 
ment in  the  larger  forms  of  music — S3rmphony, 
oratorio  and  opera. 

But  my  visit  was  not  without  compensations. 
I  attended  piano  concerts  by  Eugen  d'Albert, 
Ignace  Jan  Paderewski,  and  Rafael  Joseffy. 
70 


FOUR  FAMOUS  VIRTUOSOS 

Pachmann  I  had  heard  earlier  in  the  season  in 
my  own  home  city.  So  in  one  season  I  listened 
to  four  out  of  six  of  the  world's  greatest  pianists. 
And  it  was  very  stimulating  to  both  ears  and 
memory.  It  also  affords  me  an  opportunity  to 
preach  for  you  a  little  sermon  on  Touch  (Tone 
and  Technic  were  the  respective  themes  of  my 
last  two  letters),  which  I  have  had  in  my  mind 
for  some  time.  Do  not  be  alarmed.  I  say 
"sermon,"  but  I  mean  nothing  more  than  a  com- 
parison of  modern  methods  of  touch,  as  exempli- 
fied by  the  performances  of  the  above  four  men, 
with  the  style  of  touch  employed  by  the  pianists 
of  my  generation:  Thalberg,  Liszt,  Gottschalk, 
Tausig,  Rubinstein,  Von  Biilow,  Henselt,  and  a 
few  others. 

Pachmann  is  the  same  little  wonder-worker 
that  I  knew  when  he  studied  many  years  ago  in 
Vienna  with  Dachs.  This  same  Dachs  turned 
out  some  finished  pupils,  though  his  reputation, 
curiously  enough,  never  equalled  that  of  the  over- 
puffed  Leschetizky,  or  Epstein,  or  Anton  Door, 
all  teachers  in  the  Austrian  capital.  I  recall 
Anthony  Stankowitch,  now  in  Chicago,  and 
Benno  Schoenberger,  now  in  London,  as  Dachs* 
pupils.  Schoenberger  has  a  touch  of  gold  and  a 
style  almost  as  jeweled  as  Pachmann's — but 
more   virile.    It   must   not   be   forgotten   that 

71 


OLD   FOGY 

Pachmann  has  fine  nerves — with  such  an  ex- 
quisite touch,  his  organization  must  be  of  super- 
nal delicacy— but  little  muscular  vigor.  Consider 
his  narrow  shoulders  and  slender  arms — height 
of  figiu-e  has  nothing  to  do  with  muscular  incom- 
patibility; d'Albert  is  almost  a  dwarf,  yet  a 
colossus  of  strength.  So  let  us  call  Pachmann, 
a  survival  of  an  older  school,  a  charming  school. 
Touch  was  the  shibboleth  of  that  school,  not 
tone;  and  technic  was  often  achieved  at  the 
expense  of  more  spiritual  qualities.  The  three 
most  beautiful  touches  of  the  piano  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  were  those  of  Chopin,  Thalberg, 
and  Henselt.  Apart  from  any  consideration  of 
other  gifts,  these  three  men — a  Pole,  a  Hebrew, 
and  a  German — possessed  touches  that  sang 
and  melted  in  your  ears,  ravished  your  ears. 
Finer  in  a  vocal  sense  was  Thalb erg's  touch  than 
Liszt's;  finer  Henselt's  than  Thalberg's,  because 
more  euphonious,  and  nobler  in  tonal  texture; 
and  more  poetic  than  either  of  these  two  was 
Chopin's  ethereal  touch.  To-day  Joseffy  is  the 
nearest  approach  we  have  to  Chopin,  Paderewski 
to  Henselt,  Pachmann  to  Thalberg — save  in  the 
matter  of  a  robust  fortissimo,  which  the  tiny 
Russian  virtuoso  does  not  boast. 

After  Chopin,  Thalberg,  and  Henselt,  the  or- 
chestral school  had  its  sway — it  still  has.    Liszt, 
72 


FOUR  FAMOUS  VIRTUOSOS 

Tausig,  Rubinstein  set  the  pace  for  all  latter-day 
piano  playing.  And  while  it  may  sound  pre- 
sumptuous, I  am  inclined  to  think  that  their  suc- 
cessors are  not  far  behind  them  in  the  matter  of 
tonal  volume.  If  Liszt  or  Tausig,  or,  for  that 
matter,  Rubinstein,  produced  more  clangor  from 
theur  mstruments  than  Eugen  d'Albert,  then  my 
aural  memory  is  at  fault.  My  recollection  of 
Liszt  is  a  vivid  one :  to  me  he  was  iron ;  Tausig, 
steel;  Rubinstein,  gold.  This  metallic  classifica- 
tion is  not  intended  to  praise  gold  at  the  expense 
of  steel,  or  iron  to  the  detriment  of  gold.  It 
is  merely  my  way  of  describing  the  adamantine 
qualities  of  Liszt  and  Tausig — two  magnetic 
mountains  of  the  kind  told  of  in  Sinbad,  the 
Sailor,  to  which  was  attracted  whatever  came 
within  their  radius.  And  Rubinstein — what  a 
man,  what  an  artist,  what  a  heart!  As  Joseffy 
once  put  it,  Rubinstein's  was  not  a  pianist's 
touch,  but  the  mellow  tone  of  a  French  horn! 

Rosenthal's  art  probably  matches  Tausig's 
in  technic  and  tone.  Paderewski,  who  has 
broadened  and  developed  amazingly  during  ten 
years,  has  many  of  Henselt's  traits— and  I  am 
sure  he  never  heard  the  elder  pianist.  But  he 
belongs  to  that  group:  tonal  euphony,  supple 
technic,  a  caressing  manner,  and  a  perfect  con- 
trol of  self.  Remember,  I  am  speaking  of  the 
73 


OLD   FOGY 

Henselt  who  played  for  a  few  friends,  not  the 
frightened,  semi-limp  pianist  who  emerged  at 
long  intervals  before  the  public.  Paderewski 
is  thrice  as  poetic  as  Henselt — who  in  the  matter 
of  emotional  depth  seldom  attempted  any  more 
than  the  delineation  of  the  suave  and  elegant, 
though  he  often  played  Weber  with  glorious  fire 
and  brilliancy. 

At  this  moment  it  is  hard  to  say  where  Pade- 
rewski will  end.  I  beg  to  differ  from  Mr. 
Edward  Baxter  Perry,  who  once  declared  that 
the  Polish  virtuoso  played  at  his  previous  season 
no  different  from  his  earlier  visits.  The  Pade- 
rewski of  1902  and  1905  is  very  unlike  the  Pade- 
rewski of  1891.  His  style  more  nearly  ap- 
proximates Rubinstein's  plus  the  refinement  of 
the  Henselt  school.  He  has  sacrificed  certain 
qualities.  That  was  inevitable.  All  great  art 
is  achieved  at  the  expense — either  by  suppres- 
sion or  enlargement — of  something  precious. 
Paderewski  pounds  more ;  nor  is  he  always  letter 
perfect;  but  do  not  forget  that  pounding  from 
Paderewski  is  not  the  same  as  pounding  from 
Tom,  Dick,  and  Harry.  And,  like  Rubinstein, 
his  spilled  notes  are  more  valuable  than  other 
pianist's  scrupulously  played  ones.  In  reality, 
after  carefully  watching  the  career  of  this  remark- 
able man,  I  have  reached  the  conclusion  that  he  is 
74 


FOUR  FAMOUS  VIRTUOSOS 

passing  through  a  transition  period  in  his  "pian- 
ism."  Tired  of  his  old,  subdued,  poetic  manner; 
tired  of  being  called  a  salon  pianist  by — yes, 
Oskar  Bie  said  so  in  his  book  on  the  pianoforte ; 
and  in  the  same  chapter  wrote  of  the  fire  and  fury 
of  Gabrilowitsch  ("he  drives  the  horses  of 
Rubinstein,"  said  Bie;  he  must  have  meant 
"ponies!") — critics,  Paderewski  began  to  study 
the  grand  manner.  He  may  achieve  it,  for  his 
endurance  is  phenomenal.  Any  pianist  who  could 
do  what  I  heard  him  do  in  New  York — give  eight 
encores  after  an  exhausting  program — may  well 
lay  claim  to  the  possession  of  the  grand  manner. 
His  tone  is  still  forced ;  you  hear  the  chug  of  the 
suffering  wires;  but  who  cares  for  details — when 
the  general  performance  is  on  so  exalted  a  plane? 
And  his  touch  is  absolutely  luscious  in  cantabile. 
With  d'Albert  our  interest  is,  nowadays, 
cerebral.  When  he  was  a  youth  he  upset  Weimar 
with  his  volcanic  performances.  Rumor  said 
that  he  came  naturally  by  his  superb  gifts  (the 
Tausig  legend  is  still  believed  in  Germany). 
Now  his  indifference  to  his  medium  of  ex- 
pression does  not  prevent  him  from  lavishing 
upon  the  interpretation  of  masterpieces  the  most 
intellectual  brain  since  Von  Billow's — and  entre 
nouSf  ten  times  the  musical  equipment.  D'Al- 
bert plays  Bach,  Beethoven,  and  Brahms  as 
75 


OLD   FOGY 

no  one  else  on  this  globe — and  he  matches 
Paderewski  in  his  merciless  abuse  of  the  key- 
board. Either  a  new  instrument,  capable  of  sus- 
taining the  ferocious  attacks  upon  it,  must  be 
fabricated,  or  else  there  must  be  a  return  to  older 
styles. 

And  that  fixed  star  in  the  pianistic  firmament, 
one  who  refuses  to  descend  to  earth  and  please 
the  groundlings — Rafael  Joseffy — is  for  me  the 
most  satisfying  of  all  the  pianists.  Never  any 
excess  of  emotional  display;  never  silly  senti- 
mentaUzings,  but  a  lofty,  detached  style,  impec- 
cable technic,  tone  as  beautiful  as  starHght — yes, 
Joseffy  is  the  enchanter  who  wins  me  with  his 
disdainful  spells.  I  heard  him  play  the  Chopin 
E  minor  and  the  Liszt  A  major  concertos;  also 
a  brace  of  encores.  Perfection!  The  Liszt 
was  not  so  brilliant  as  Reisenauer;  but — again 
within  its  frame — perfection!  The  Chopin  was 
as  Chopin  would  have  had  it  given  in  1840.  And 
there  were  refinements  of  tone-color  undreamed 
of  even  by  Chopin.  Paderewsld  is  Paderewski — 
and  Joseffy  is  perfection.  Paderewski  is  the 
most  eclectic  of  the  four  pianists  I  have  taken  for 
my  text;  Joseffy  the  most  subtly  poetic;  D'Albert 
the  most  profound  and  intellectually  significant, 
and  Pachmann — well,  Vladimir  is  the  enfant 
terrible  of  the  quartet,  a  whimsical,  fantastic 
76 


FOUR  FAMOUS  \TRTUOSOS 

charmer,  an  apparition  with  rare  talents,  and  an 
interpreter  of  the  Lesser  Chopin  (always  the 
great  Chopin)  without  a  peer.  Let  us  be  happy 
that  we  are  vouchsafed  the  pleasure  of  hearing 
four  such  artists. 

77 


IX 

THE    INFLUENCE    OF    DADDY    LISZT 

HAVE  you  read  Thoreau's  Walden  with  its 
smell  of  the  woods  and  its  ozone-per- 
meated pages?  I  recommend  the  book 
to  all  pianists,  especially  to  those  pianists  who  hug 
the  house,  practising  all  day  and  laboring  under 
the  delusion  that  they  are  developing  their  indi- 
viduality. Singular  thing,  this  rage  for  culture 
nowadays  among  musicians!  They  have  been 
admonished  so  often  in  print  and  private  that 
their  ignorance  is  not  blissful,  indeed  it  is  bane- 
ful, that  these  ambitious  ladies  and  gentlemen 
rush  off  to  the  booksellers,  to  Ubraries,  and 
literally  gorge  themselves  with  the  "ologies" 
and  "isms"  of  the  day.  Lord,  Lord,  how  I 
enjoy  meeting  them  at  a  musicale!  There  they 
sit,  cocked  and  primed  for  a  verbal  encounter, 
waiting  to  knock  the  literary  chip  off  their  neigh- 
bor's shoulder. 

"Have  you  read" — begins  some  one  and  the 
chattering  begins,  furioso.  *'0h,  Nietzsche? 
why  of  course," — "Tolstoi's  What  is  Art?  cer- 
tainly, he  ought  to  be  electrocuted" — "Nordau! 
isn't  he  terrible?"  And  the  cacophonous  con- 
78 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  DADDY  LISZT 

versational  symphony  rages,  and  when  it  is  spent, 
the  man  who  asked  the  question  finishes: 

"Have  you  read  the  notice  of  Rosenthal's 
playing  in  the  K'dlnische  Zeitung?^''  and  there  is  a 
battery  of  suspicious  looks  directed  towards  him 
whilst  murmurs  arise,  "What  an  uncultured  man! 
To  talk  'shop'  like  a  regular  musician!"  The 
fact  being  that  the  man  had  read  everything,  but 
was  setting  a  trap  for  the  vanity  of  these  egre- 
gious persons.  The  newspapers,  the  managers 
and  the  artists  before  the  public  are  to  blame  for 
this  callow,  shallow  attempt  at  culture.  We  read 
that  Rosenthal  is  a  second  Heine  in  conversa- 
tion. That  he  spills  epigrams  at  his  meals  and 
dribbles  proverbs  at  the  piano.  He  has  com- 
mitted all  of  Heine  to  memory  and  in  the  green- 
room reads  Sanscrit.  PadereWski,  too,  is  pro- 
foundly something  or  other.  Like  Wagner,  he 
writes  his  own  program — I  mean  plots  for  his 
operas.  He  is  much  given  to  reading  Swin- 
burne because  some  one  once  compared  him  to 
the  bad,  mad,  sad,  glad,  fad  poet  of  England, 
begad!  As  for  Sauer,  we  hardly  know  where  to 
begin.  He  writes  blank  verse  tragedies  and  dis- 
cusses Ibsen  with  his  landlady.  Pianists  are 
now  so  intellectual  that  they  sometimes  forget  to 
play  the  piano  well. 

Of  course.  Daddy  Liszt  began  it  all.  He  had 
79 


OLD   FOGY 

read  everything  before  he  was  twenty,  and  had 
embraced  and  renegaded  from  twenty  religions. 
This  volatile,  versatile,  vibratile,  vivacious, 
vicious  temperament  of  his  has  been  copied  by 
most  modem  pianists  who  haven't  brains  enough 
to  parse  a  sentence  or  play  a  Bach  Invention. 
The  Weimar  crew  all  imitated  Liszt's  style  in 
octaves  and  hair  dressing.  I  was  there  once,  a 
sunny  day  in  May,  the  hedges  white  with  flowers 
and  the  air  full  of  bock-bier.  Ah,  thronging  mem- 
ories of  youth!  I  was  slowly  walking  through  a 
sun-smitten  lane  when  a  man  on  horse  dashed  by 
me,  his  face  red  with  excitement,  his  beast  cov- 
ered with  lather.  He  kept  shouting  **Make 
room  for  the  master!  make  way  for  the  master!" 
and  presently  a  venerable  man  with  a  purple  nose 
—a  Cyrano  de  Cognac  nose — came  towards  me. 
He  wore  a  monkish  habit  and  on  his  head  was  a 
huge  shovel-shaped  hat,  the  sort  affected  by  Don 
Basilio  in  The  Barber  of  Seville. 

"It  must  be  Liszt  or  the  devil!"  I  cried  aloud, 
and  Liszt  laughed,  his  warts  growing  purple, 
his  whole  expression  being  one  of  good-humor. 
He  invited  me  to  refreshment  at  the  Czemy 
House,  but  I  refused.  During  the  time  he  stood 
talking  to  me  a  throng  of  young  Liszts  gathered 
about  us.  I  call  them  "young  Liszts"  because 
they  mimicked  the  old  gentleman  in  an  out- 
80 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  DADDY  LISZT 

rageous  manner.  They  wore  their  hair  on  their 
shoulders,  they  sprinkled  it  with  flour;  they  even 
went  to  such  lengths  as  to  paint  purpUsh  excres- 
cences on  their  chins  and  brows.  They  wore 
semi-sacerdotal  robes,  they  held  their  hands  in 
the  peculiar  and  affected  style  of  Liszt,  and  they 
one  and  all  wore  shovel  hats.  When  Liszt  left 
me — we  studied  together  with  Czemy — they 
trooped  after  him,  their  garments  ballooning 
in  the  breeze,  and  upon  their  silly  faces  was  the 
devotion  of  a  pet  ape. 

I  mention  this  because  I  have  never  met  a 
Liszt  pupil  since  without  recalling  that  day  in 
Weimar.  And  when  one  plays  I  close  my  eyes 
and  hear  the  frantic  effort  to  copy  Liszt's  bad 
touch  and  supple,  sUding,  treacherous  technic. 
Liszt,  you  may  not  know,  had  a  wretched  touch. 
The  old  boy  was  conscious  of  it,  for  he  told  William 
Mason  once,  * 'Don't  copy  my  touch;  it's  spoiled." 
He  had  for  so  many  years  pounded  and  punched 
the  keyboard  that  his  tactile  sensibility — isn't 
that  your  new-fangled  expression? — had  vanished. 
His  * 'orchestral"  playing  was  one  of  those  pretty 
fables  invented  by  hypnotized  pupils  like  Amy 
Fay,  Aus  der  Ohe,  and  other  enthusiastic  but  not 
very  critical  persons.  I  remember  well  that 
Liszt,  who  was  first  and  foremost  a  melodramatic 
actor,  had  a  habit  of  striding  to  the  instrument, 
8i 


OLD   FOGY 

sitting  down  in  a  magnificent  manner  and  up- 
lifting his  big  fists  as  if  to  annihilate  the  ivories. 
He  was  a  master  hypnotist,  and  like  John  L. 
Sullivan  he  had  his  adversary — the  audience — 
conquered  before  he  struck  a  blow.  His  glance 
was  terrific,  his  "nerve"  enormous.  What  he 
did  afterward  didn't  much  matter.  He  usually 
accomplished  a  hard  day's  threshing  with  those 
fiail-Uke  arms  of  his,  and,  heavens,  how  the  poor 
piano  objected  to  being  taken  for  a  barn-floor! 

Touch!  Why,  Thalberg  had  the  touch,  a 
touch  that  Liszt  secretly  envied.  In  the  famous 
Paris  duel  that  followed  the  visits  of  the  pair  to 
Paris,  Liszt  was  heard  to  a  distinct  disadvantage. 
He  wrote  articles  about  himself  in  the  musical 
papers — a  practice  that  his  disciples  have  not 
failed  to  emulate — and  in  an^article  on  Thalberg 
displayed  his  bad  taste  in  abusing  what  he  could 
not  imitate.  Oh  yes,  Liszt  was  a  great  thief. 
His  piano  music — I  mean  his  so-called  original 
music — is  nothing  but  Chopin  and  brandy. 
His  pyrotechnical  effects  are  borrowed  from  Paga- 
nini,  and  as  soon  as  a  new  head  popped  up  over 
the  musical  horizon  he  helped  himself  to  its 
hair.  So  in  his  piano  music  we  find  a  conglomer- 
ation of  other  men's  ideas,  other  men's  figures. 
When  he  wrote  for  orchestra  the  hand  is  the  hand 
of  Liszt,  but  the  voice  is  that  of  Hector  Berlioz. 
82 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  DADDY  LISZT 

I  never  could  quite  see  Liszt.  He  hung  on  tfa 
Chopin  until  the  suspicious  Pole  got  rid  of  him 
and  then  he  strung  after  Wagner.  I  do  not  mean 
that  Liszt  was  without  merit,  but  I  do  assert 
that  he  should  have  left  the  piano  a  piano,  and  not 
tried  to  transform  it  to  a  miniature  orchestra. 

Let  us  consider  some  of  his  compositions. 

Liszt  began  with  machine-made  fantasias  on 
faded  Italian  operas — not,  however,  faded  in  his 
time.  He  devilled  these  as  does  the  culinary 
artist  the  crab  of  commerce.  He  peppered  and 
salted  them  and  then  giving  for  a  background  a 
real  New  Jersey  thunderstorm,  the  concoction 
was  served  hot  and  smoking.  Is  it  any  wonder 
that  as  Mendelssohn  relates,  the  Liszt  audience 
always  stood  on  the  seats  to  watch  him  dance 
through  the  Lucia  fantasia?  Now  every  school 
girl  jigs  this  fatuous  stuff  before  she  mounts  her 
bicycle. 

And  the  new  critics,  who  never  heard  Thalberg, 
have  the  impertinence  to  flout  him,  to  make 
merry  at  his  fantasias.  Just  compare  the  Don 
Juan  of  Liszt  and  the  Don  Juan  of  Thalberg! 
See  which  is  the  more  musical,  the  more  pianistic. 
Liszt,  after  running  through  the  gamut  of  operatic 
extravagance,  began  to  paraphrase  movements 
from  Beethoven  symphonies,  bits  of  quartets, 
Wagner  overtures  and  every  nondescript  thing 
83 


OLD   FOGY 

he  could  lay  his  destructive  hands  on.  How  he 
maltreated  the  Tannh'duser  overture  we  know 
from  Josef  Hofmann's  recent  brilliant  but  ineffect- 
ual playing  of  it.  Wagner,  being  formless  and 
all  orchestral  color,  loses  everything  by  being 
transferred  to  the  piano.  Then,  sighing  for  fresh 
fields,  the  rapacious  Magyar  seized  the  tender 
melodies  of  Schubert,  Schumann,  Franz  and 
Brahms  and  forced  them  to  the  block.  Need 
I  tell  you  that  their  heads  were  ruthlessly 
chopped  and  hacked?  A  special  art-form  Hke 
the  song  that  needs  the  co-operation  of  poetry 
is  robbed  of  one-half  its  value  in  a  piano  transcrip- 
tion. By  this  time  Liszt  had  evolved  a  style  of 
his  own,  a  style  of  shreds  and  patches  from  the 
raiment  of  other  men.  His  style,  like  Joseph's 
coat  of  many  colors,  appealed  to  pianists  because 
of  its  factitious  brilliancy. 

The  cement  of  brilliancy  Liszt  always  contrived 
to  cover  his  most  commonplace  compositions 
with.  He  wrote  etudes  h  la  Chopin;  clever,  I 
admit,  but  for  my  taste  his  Opus  One,  which  he 
afterwards  dressed  up  into  Twelve  Etudes 
Transcendentales— listen  to  the  big,  boastful 
title! — is  better  than  the  furbished  up  later  col- 
lection. His  three  concert  studies  are  Chopin- 
ish;  his  Waldesrauschen  is  pretty,  but  leads  no- 
where; his  Annees  des  Pilerinage  sickly  with 
84 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  DADDY  LISZT 

sentimentalism ;  his  Dante  Sonata  a  horror;  his 
B -minor  Sonata  a  madman's  tale  signifying  froth 
and  fury;  his  legendes,  ballades,  sonettes,  Bene- 
dictions in  out  of  the  way  places,  all,  all  with 
choral  attachments,  are  cheap,  specious,  artificial 
and  insincere.  Theatrical  Liszt  was  to  a  virtue, 
and  his  continual  worship  of  God  in  his  music  is 
for  me  monotonously  blasphemous. 

The  Rhapsodies  I  reserve  for  the  last.  They 
are  the  nightmare  curse  of  the  pianist,  with  their 
rattle-trap  harmonies,  their  helter-skelter  melo- 
dies, their  vulgarity  and  cheap  bohemianism. 
They  all  begin  in  the  church  and  end  in  the  tavern. 
There  is  a  fad  just  now  for  eating  ill-cooked  food 
and  drinking  sour  Hungarian  wine  to  the  ac- 
companiment of  a  wretched  gypsy  circus  called  a 
Czardas.  Liszt's  rhapsodies  irresistibly  remind 
me  of  a  cheap,  tawdry,  dirty  table  d'hote,  where 
evil-smelling  dishes  are  put  before  you,  to  be 
whisked  away  and  replaced  by  evil-tasting 
messes.  If  Liszt  be  your  god,  why  then  give 
me  Czerny,  or,  better  still,  a  long  walk  in  the 
woods,  humming  with  nature's  rhythms.  I 
think  I'll  read  Walden  over  again.  Now  do 
you  think  I  am  as  amiable  as  I  look?   / 

85 


X 

BACH— ONCE,  LAST,  AND  ALL  THE  TIME 

I'M  an  old,  old  man.  I've  seen  the  world  of 
sights,  and  I've  listened  eagerly,  aye, 
greedily,  to  the  world  of  sound,  to  that  sweet, 
maddening  concourse  of  tones  civilized  Cauca- 
sians agree  is  the  one,  the  only  art.  I,  too,  have 
had  my  mad  days,  my  days  of  joys  uncontrolled 
— doesn't  Walt  Whitman  say  that  somewhere? — 
I've  even  rioted  in  Verdi.  Ah,  you  are  surprised! 
You  fancied  I  knew  my  Czerny  et  voild  tout?  Let 
me  have  your  ear.  I've  run  the  whole  gamut  of 
musical  composers.  I  once  swore  by  Meyer- 
beer. I  came  near  worshiping  Wagner,  the  early 
Wagner,  and  today  I  am  willing  to  acknowledge 
that  Die  Meister singer  is  the  very  apex  of  a 
modem  polyphonic  score.  I  adored  Spohr  and 
found  good  in  Auber.  In  a  word,  I  had  my  httle 
attacks  of  musical  madness,  for  all  the  world  like 
measles,  scarlet  fever,  chicken-pox,  and  the 
mumps. 

As  I  grew  older  my  task  clarified.  Having 
admired  Donizetti,  there  was  no  danger  of  being 
seduced  by  the  boisterous,  roystering  Mascagni. 
Knowing  Mozart  almost  by  heart,  Gounod  and  his 
paUid  imitations  did  not  for  an  instant  impose  on 
86 


BACH— ONCE,  LAST,  AND  ALL  THE  TIME 

me.  Ah!  I  knew  them  all,  these  vampires  who 
not  only  absorb  a  dead  man's  ideas,  but  actually 
copy  his  style,  hoping  his  interment  included 
his  works  as  well  as  his  mortal  remains.  Being 
violently  self-conscious,  I  sought  as  I  passed 
youth  and  its  dangerous  critical  heats  to  analyze 
just  why  I  preferred  one  man's  music  to  another's. 
Why  was  I  attracted  to  Brahms  whilst  Wagner 
left  me  cold?  Why  did  Schumann  not  appeal 
to  me  as  much  as  Mendelssohn?  Why  Mozart 
more  than  Beethoven?  At  last,  one  day,  and  not 
many  years  ago,  I  cried  aloud,  "Bach,  it  is  Bach 
who  does  it.  Bach  who  animates  the  wooden, 
lifeless  Umbs  of  these  classicists,  these  modem 
men.    Bach — once,  last,  and  all  the  time." 

And  so  it  came  about  that  with  my  prying  nose 
I  dipped  into  all  composers,  and  found  that  the 
houses  they  erected  were  stable  in  the  exact 
proportion  that  Bach  was  used  in  the  founda- 
tions. If  much  Bach,  then  granted  talent,  the 
man  reared  a  solid  structure.  If  no  Bach,  then 
no  matter  how  brilliant,  how  meteoric,  how  sen- 
sational the  talents,  smash  came  tumbling  down 
the  musical  mansion,  smash  went  the  fellow's 
hastily  erected  palace.  Whether  it  is  Perosi — 
who  swears  by  Bach  and  doesn't  understand  or 
study  him — or  Mascagni  or  Massenet,  or  any  of 
the  new  school,  the  result  is  the  same.  Bach  is 
87 


OLD   FOGY 

the  touchstone.  Look  at  Verdi,  the  Verdi  of 
Don  Carlo  and  the  Verdi  who  planned  and  built 
Falstaff.  Mind  you,  it  is  not  that  big  fugued 
finale — surely  one  of  the  most  astounding  operatic 
codas  in  existence — that  carries  me  away.  It 
is  the  general  texture  of  the  work,  its  many  voices, 
like  the  sweet  mingled  roar  of  Buttermilk  Falls, 
that  draws  me  to  Falstaff.  It  is  because  of  Bach 
that  I  have  forsworn  my  dislike  of  the  later  Wag- 
ner, and  unlearned  my  disgust  at  his  overpower- 
ing sensuousness.  The  web  he  spins  is  too 
glaring  for  my  taste,  but  its  pattern  is  so  lovely, 
so  admirable,  that  I  have  grown  very  fond  of  The 
Mastersingers. 

Bach  is  in  all  great,  all  good  compositions,  and 
especially  is  he  a  test  for  modem  piano  music. 
The  monophonic  has  been  done  to  the  death  by  a 
whole  tribe  of  shallow  charlatans,  who,  under  the 
pretence  that  they  wrote  in  a  true  piano  style, 
literally  debauched  several  generations  of  stu- 
dents. Shall  I  mention  names?  Better  disturb 
neither  the  dead  nor  the  quick.  In  the  matter 
of  writing  for  more  voices  than  one  we  have 
retrograded  considerably  since  the  days  of 
Bach.  We  have,  to  be  sure,  built  up  a  more  com- 
plex harmonic  system,  beautiful  chords  have 
been  invented,  or  rather  re-discovered — for  in 
Bach  all  were  latent — but,  confound  it,  children! 
88 


BACH— ONCE,  LAST,  AND  ALL  THE  TIME 

these  chords  are  too  slow,  too  ponderous  m  gait 
for  me.  Music  is,  first  of  all,  motion,  after  that 
emotion.  I  like  movement,  rhjrthmical  variety, 
polyphonic  life.  It  is  only  in  a  few  latter-day 
composers  that  I  find  music  that  moves,  that 
sings,  that  thrills. 

How  did  I  discover  that  Bach  was  in  the  very 
heart  of  Wagner?  In  the  simplest  manner.  I 
began  playing  the  E-flat  minor  Prelude  in  the 
first  book  of  the  Well-tempered  Clavichord,  and 
lo!  I  was  transported  to  the  opening  of  Gotter- 
ddmmerung. 

Pretty  smart  boy  that  Richard  Geyer  to  know 
his  Bach  so  well!  Yet  the  resemblance  is  far 
fetched,  is  only  a  hazy  similarity.  The  triad  of 
E-flat  minor  is  common  property,  but  something 
told  me  Wagner  had  been  browsing  on  Bach; 
on  this  particular  prelude  had,  in  fact,  got  a 
starting  point  for  the  Norn  music.  The  more 
I  studied  Wagner,  the  more  I  found  Bach,  and  the 
more  Bach,  the  better  the  music.  Chopin  knew 
his  Bach  backwards,  hence  the  surprisingly  fresh, 
vital  quality  of  his  music,  despite  its  pessimistic 
coloring.  Schumann  loved  Bach  and  built  his 
best  music  on  him,  Mendelssohn  re-discovered 
him,  whilst  Beethoven  played  the  Well-tempered 
Clavichord  every  day  of  his  life. 

All  my  pupils  study  the  Inventions  before  they 
89 


OLD   FOGY 

play  Clementi  or  Beethoven,  and  what  well- 
springs  of  delight  are  these  two-  and  three-part 
pieces!  Take  my  word  for  it,  if  you  have  mas- 
tered them  you  may  walk  boldly  up  to  any  of  the 
great,  insolent  forty-eight  sweet-tempered  pre- 
ludes and  fugues  and  overcome  them.  Study 
Bach  say  I  to  every  one,  but  study  him  sensibly. 
Tausig,  the  greatest  pianist  the  world  has  yet 
heard,  edited  about  twenty  preludes  and  fugues 
from  the  Clavichord.  These  he  gave  his  pupils 
after  they  had  played  Chopin's  opus  10.  Strange 
idea,  isn't  it?  Before  that  they  played  the 
Inventions.,  the  symphonies,  the  French  and 
English  Suites — Klindworth's  edition  of  the 
latter  is  excellent — and  the  Partitas.  Then,  I 
should  say,  the  Italian  concert  and  that  excellent 
three-voiced  fugue  in  A  minor,  so  seldom  heard 
in  concert.  It  is  pleasing  rather  than  deep  in 
feeling,  but  how  effective,  how  brilliant!  Don't 
forget  the  toccatas,  fantasias,  and  capriccios. 
Such  works  as  The  Art  of  Fugue  and  others  of 
the  same  class  show  us  Father  Bach  in  his  work- 
ing clothes,  earnest  if  not  exactly  inspired. 

But  in  his  moments  of  inspiration  what  a 
genius!  What  a  singularly  happy  welding  of 
manner  and  matter!  The  Chromatic  Fantasia 
is  to  me  greater  than  any  of  the  organ  works, 
with  the  possible  exception  of  the  G  minor 
90 


BACH— ONCE,  LAST,  AND  ALL  THE  TIME 

Fantasia.  Indeed,  I  think  it  greater  than  its 
accompanying  D  minor  Fugue,  In  it  are  the 
harmonic,  melodic,  and  spiritual  germs  of 
modem  music.  The  restless  tonalities,  the 
agitated,  passionate,  desperate,  dramatic  recita- 
tives, the  emotional  curve  of  the  music,  are  not 
all  these  modern,  only  executed  in  such  a 
transcendental  fashion  as  to  beggar  imitation? 

Let  us  turn  to  the  Well-tempered  Clavichord 
and  bow  the  knee  of  submission,  of  admiration, 
of  worship.  I  use  the  Klindworth,  the  Busoni 
and  sometimes  the  Bischoff  edition,  never  Kroll, 
never  Czerny.  I  think  it  was  the  latter  who  once 
excited  my  rage  when  I  found  the  C  sharp  major 
prelude  transposed  to  the  key  of  D  flat!  This 
outrageous  proceeding  pales,  however,  before  the 
infamous  behavior  of  Gounod,  who  dared — the 
sacrilegious  Gaul! — to  place  upon  the  wonderful 
harmonies  .of  the  master  of  masters  a  cheap, 
tawdry,  vulgar  tune.  Gounod  deserved  oblivion 
for  this.  I  think  I  have  my  favorites,  and  for  a 
day  delude  myself  that  I  prefer  certain  preludes, 
certain  fugues,  but  a  few  hours'  study  of  its  next- 
door  neighbor  and  I  am  intoxicated  with  its 
beauties.  We  have  all  played  and  loved  the 
C  minor  Prelude  in  Book  one — Cramer  made  a 
study  on  memories  of  this — and  who  has  not 
felt  happy  at  its  wonderful  fugue!    Yet  a  few 

91 


OLD   FOGY 

fSiges  on  is  a  marvelous  Fugue  in  C  sharp  minor 
With  five  voices  that  slowly  crawl  to  heaven's 
gate.  Jump  a  Uttle  distance  and  you  land  in  the 
E  flat  Fugue  with  its  assertiveness,  its  cocksure 
subject,  and  then  consider  the  pattering,  gossiping 
one  in  E  minor.  If  you  are  in  the  mood,  has  there 
ever  been  written  a  brighter,  more  amiable, 
graceful  prelude  than  the  eleventh  in  F?  Its 
germ  is  perhaps  the  F  major  Invention,  the 
eighth.  A  marked  favorite  of  mine  is  the 
fifteenth  fugue  in  G.  There's  a  subject  for 
you  and  what  a  jolly  length! 

Bach  could  spin  music  as  a  spider  spins  its 
nest,  from  earth  to  the  sky  and  back  again.  Did 
you  ever  hear  Rubinstein  play  the  B-flat  Prelude 
and  Fugue?  If  you  have  not,  count  something 
missed  in  your  life.  He  made  the  prelude  as 
light  as  a  moonbeam,  but  there  was  thunder  in  the 
air,  the  clouds  floated  away,  airy  nothings  in  the 
blue,  and  then  celestial  silence.  Has  any 
modem  composer  written  music  in  which  is 
packed  as  much  meaning,  as  much  sorrow  as 
may  be  found  in  the  B-flat  minor  Prelude?  W^e:^ 
is  the  matrix  of  all  modem  musical  emotion. 

I  don't  know  why  I  persist  in  saying  "modem," 

as  if  there  is  any  particular  feeUng,  emotion,  or 

sensation  discovered  and  exploited  by  the  man 

of  this  time  that  men  of  other  ages  did  not  ex- 

92 


BACH— ONCE,  LAST,  AND  ALL  THE  TIME 

perience!  But  before  Bach  I  knew  no  one  who 
ranged  the  keyboard  of  the  emotions  so  freely, 
so  profoundly,  so  poignantly. 

Touching  on  his  technics,  I  may  say  that  they 
require  of  the  pianist's  fingers  individualization 
and,  consequently,  a  flexibility  that  is  spiritual  as 
well  as  material.  The  diligent  daily  study  of 
Bach  will  form  your  style,  your  technics,  better 
than  all  machines  and  finger  exercises.  But 
play  him  as  if  he  were  human,  a  contemporary 
and  not  a  historical  reminiscence.  Yes,  you  may 
indulge  in  rubato.  I  would  rather  hear  it  in  Bach 
than  in  Chopin.  Play  Bach  as  if  he  still  composed 
— he  does — and  drop  the  nonsense  about  tradi- 
tional methods  of  performance.  He  would 
alter  all  that  if  he  were  alive  today. 

I  know  but  one  Bach  anecdote,  and  that  I  have 
never  seen  in  print.  The  story  was  related  to  me 
by  a  pupil  of  Reinecke,  and  Reinecke  got  it  from 
Mendelssohn.  Bach,  so  it  appears,  was  in  the 
habit  of  practising  every  day  in  the  Thomas- 
Kirche  at  Leipsic,  and  one  day  several  of  his 
sons,  headed  by  the  naughty  Friedmann,  resolved 
to  play  a  joke  on  their  good  old  father.  Accord- 
ingly, they  repaired  to  the  choir  loft,  got  the  bel- 
lows-blower away,  and  started  in  to  give  the 
Master  a  surprise.  They  tied  the  handle  of  the 
bellows  to  the  door  of  the  choir,  and  with  a  long 

93 


OLD   FOGY 

rope  fastened  to  the  outside  knob  they  pulled 
the  door  open  and  shut,  and  of  course  the  wind 
ran  low.  Johann  Sebastian — who  looked  more 
like  E.  M.  Bowman  than  E.  M.  B.  himself — 
suddenly  found  himself  clawing  ivory.  He  rose 
and  went  softly  to  the  rear.  Discovering  no 
blower,  he  investigated,  and  began  to  gently  haul 
in  the  line.  When  it  was  all  in  several  boys  were 
at  the  end  of  it.  Did  he  whip  them?  Not  he. 
He  locked  the  door,  tied  them  to  the  bellows  and 
sternly  bade  them  blow.  They  did.  Then  the 
archangel  of  music  went  back  to  his  bench  and 
composed  the  famous  Wedge  fugue.  How  true 
all  this  is  I  know  not,  but  anyhow  it  is  quaint 
enough.  Let  me  end  this  exhortation  by  quoting 
some  words  of  Eduard  Remenyi  from  his  fantastic 
essay  on  Bach:  "If  you  want  music  for  your  own 
and  music's  sake — look  up  to  Bach.  If  you 
want  music  which  is  as  absolutely  full  of  meaning 
as  an  egg  is  full  of  meat — look  up  to  Bach." 
Look  up  to  Bach.    Sound  advice.    Profit  by  it. 

94 


XI 

SCHUMANN:  A  VANISHING  STAR 

THE  missing  meteors  of  November  minded 
me  of  the  musical  reputations  I  have  seen 
rise,  fill  mid-heaven  with  splendor,  pale, 
and  fade  into  ineffectual  twilight.  Alas!  it  is  one 
of  the  bitter  things  of  old  age,  one  of  its  keen  tor- 
tures, to  listen  to  young  people,  to  hear  their 
superb  boastings,  and  to  know  how  short-lived 
is  all  art,  music  the  most  evanescent  of  them  all. 
When  I  was  a  boy  the  star  of  Schumann  was  just 
on  the  rim  of  the  horizon;  what  glory!  what  a 
planet  swimming  freely  into  the  glorious  con- 
stellation! Beethoven  was  clean  obscured  by 
the  romantic  mists  that  went  to  our  heads  like 
strong,  new  wine,  and  made  us  drunk  with  joy. 
How  neat,  dapper,  respectable  and  antique 
Mendelssohn!  Being  Teutonic  in  our  learnings, 
Chopin  seemed  French  and  dandified — the 
Slavic  side  of  him  was  not  yet  in  evidence  to  our 
imanointed  vision.  Schubert  was  a  divinely 
awkward  stammerer,  and  Liszt  the  brilliant 
centipede  amongst  virtuosi.  They  were  rap- 
turous days  and  we  fed  full  upon  Jean  Paul 
Richter,  Hoffmann,  moonshine  and  mush. 
What  the  lads  and  lassies  of  ideal  predilections 
95 


OLD   FOGY 

needed  was  a  man  like  Schumann,  a  dreamer  of 
dreams,  yet  one  who  pmned  illuminative  tags  to 
his  visions  to  give  them  symbolical  meanings, 
dragged  in  poetry  by  the  hair,  and  called  the 
composite,  art.  Schumann,  born  mentally  sick, 
a  man  with  the  germs  of  insanity,  a  pathological 
case,  a  literary  man  turned  composer — Schu- 
mann, I  say,  topsy-turvied  all  the  newly  bom 
and,  without  knowing  it,  diverted  for  the  time 
music  from  its  true  current.  He  preached 
Brahms  and  Chopin,  but  practised  Wagner — he 
was  the  forerunner  to  Wagner,  for  he  was  the 
first  composer  who  fashioned  literature  into  tone. 
Doesn't  all  this  sound  revolutionary?  An  old 
fellow  like  me  talking  this  way,  finding  old- 
fashioned  what  he  once  saw  leave  the  bank  of 
melody  with  the  mintage  glitteringly  fresh! 
Yet  it  is  so.  I  have  lived  to  witness  the  rise  of 
Schumann  and,  please  Apollo,  I  shall  live  to  see 
the  eclipse  of  Wagner.  Can't  you  read  the  hand- 
writing on  the  wall?  Dinna  ye  hear  the  slogan 
of  the  realists?  No  music  rooted  in  bookish 
ideas,  in  Uterary  or  artistic  movements,  will 
survive  the  mutations  of  the  Zeitgeist.  Schu- 
mann reared  his  palace  on  a  mirage.  The  inside 
he  called  Bachian — but  it  wasn't.  In  variety 
of  key-color  perhaps;  but  structurally  no  sjnn- 
phony  may  be  built  on  Bach,  for  a  sufficient 
96 


SCHUMANN;  A  VANISHING  STAR 

reason.  Schumann  had  the  great  structure 
models  before  him;  he  heeded  them  not.  He 
did  not  pattern  after  the  three  master-architects, 
Haydn,  Mozart,  and  Beethoven;  gave  no  time 
to  Une,  fascinated  as  he  was  by  the  problems  of 
color.  But  color  fades.  Where  are  the  Turners 
of  yester-year?  Form  and  form  only  endures, 
and  so  it  has  come  to  pass  that  of  his  four  sym- 
phonies, not  one  is  called  great  in  the  land  where 
he  was  king  for  a  day.  The  B-flat  is  a  pretty 
suite,  the  C-major  inutile — always  barring  the 
lyric  episodes — the  D-minor  a  thing  of  shreds 
and  patches,  and  the  Rhenish — muddy  as  the 
river  Rhine  in  winter  time. 

The  E-flat  piano  Quintet  will  live  and  also  the 
piano  concerto — originally  a  fantasia  in  one 
movement.  Thus  Schumann  experimented  and 
built,  following  the  line  of  easiest  resistance, 
which  is  the  poetic  idea.  If  he  had  patterned  as 
has  Brahms,  he  would  have  sternly  put  aside  his 
childish  romanticism,  left  its  imwholesome  if 
captivating  shadows,  and  pushed  bravely  into  the 
open,  where  the  sim  and  moon  shine  without 
the  blur  and  miasma  of  a  decadent  literature. 
But  then  we  should  not  have  had  Schumann. 
It  was  not  to  be,  and  thus  it  is  that  his  is  a  name 
with  a  musical  sigh,  a  name  that  evokes  charm- 
ing memories,  and  also,  I  must  admit,  a  name  that 
97 


OLD   FOGY 

gently  plucks  at  one's  heart-strings.  His  songs 
are  sweet,  yet  never  so  spontaneous  as  Schubert's, 
so  astringently  intellectual  as  Robert  Franz's. 
His  opera,  his  string  quartets — how  far  are  the 
latter  from  the  noble,  self-contained  music  in 
this  form  of  Beethoven  and  Brahms! — and  his 
choral  compositions  are  already  in  the  sad,  gray 
penumbra  of  the  negligible.  His  piano  music  is 
without  the  clear,  chiseled  contours  of  Chopin, 
without  a  definite,  a  great  style,  yet — the  piano 
music  of  Schumann,  how  lovely  some  of  it  is! 

I  will  stop  my  heartless  heart-to-heart  talk. 
It  is  too  depressing,  these  vagaries,  these  senile 
ramblings  of  a  superannuated  musician.  Ah, 
me !  I  too  was  once  in  Arcady,  where  the  shep- 
herds bravely  piped  original  and  penetrating 
times,  where  the  little  shepherdesses  danced  to 
their  lords  and  smiled  sweet  porcelain  smiles. 
It  was  all  very  real,  this  music  of  the  middle 
century,  and  it  was  written  for  the  time,  it  suited 
the  time,  and  when  the  time  passed,  the  music 
with  the  men  grew  stale,  sour,  and  something  to 
be  avoided,  like  the  leer  of  a  creaking,  senescent 
heaUf  like  the  rouge  and  grimace  of  a  debile 
coquette,  yiy  advice  then  is,  enjoy  the  music 
of  your  epoch,  for  there  is  no  such  thing  as  music 
of  the  future.  It  is  always  music  of  the  present. 
Schumann  has  had  his  day,  Wagner  is  having 
98 


SCHUMANN:  A  VANISHING  STAR 

his,  and  Brahms  will  be  ruler  of  all  tomorrow. 
Eheu  Fug  aces! 

There  was  a  time,  mes  enfanis,  when  I  played 
at  all  the  Schimiann  piano  music.  The  Abegg 
variations,  the  Papillons,  the  Intermezzi — "an 
extension  of  the  Papillons"  said  Schumann — 
Die  Davidsbiindler,  that  wonderful  toccata  in  C, 
the  best  double-note  study  in  existence — 
because  it  is  music  first,  technics  afterward — 
the  seldom  attempted  Allegro^  opus  8,  the 
Carnavalf  tender  and  dazzling  miniatures,  the 
twelve  settings  of  Paganini,  much  more  musical 
than  Liszt's,  the  Impromptus,  a  deUcate  compli- 
ment to  his  Clara.  It  is  always  Clara  with  this 
Robert,  like  that  other  Robert,  the  strong-souled 
English  husband  of  Elizabeth  Browning.  Schu- 
mann's whole  life  romance  centered  in  his  wife. 
A  man  in  love  with  his  wife  and  that  man  a 
musician!  Why,  the  entire  episode  must  seem 
abnormal  to  the  flighty,  capricious  younger  set, 
the  Bayxeuth  set,  for  example.  But  it  was  an 
ideal  union,  the  woman  a  sympathetic  artist, 
the  composer  writing  for  her,  writing  songs, 
piano  music,  even  criticism  for  and  about  her. 
Decidedly  one  of  the  prettiest  and  most  whole- 
some pictures  in  the  history  of  any  art. 

Then  I  attacked  the  F-sharp  Minor  Sonata, 
with  its  wondrous  introduction  like   the  vast, 

99 


OLD   FOGY 

somber  portals  to  some  fantastic  Gothic  pile. 
The  Fantasiestiicke  opus  12,  still  remain  Schu- 
mann at  his  happiest,  and  easiest  comprehended. 
The  Symphonic  Variations  are  the  greatest  of  all, 
greater  than  the  Concerto  or  the  Fantasie  in  C. 
These  almost  persuade  one  that  their  author  is  a 
fit  companion  for  Beethoven  and  Chopin.  There 
is  invention,  workmanship,  and  a  solidity  that 
never  for  a  moment  clashes  with  the  tide  of 
romantic  passion  surging  beneath.  Here  he 
strikes  fire  and  the  blaze  is  glorious. 

The  F-minor  Sonata — the  so-called  Concert 
sans  orchestre — a  truncated,  unequal  though 
interesting  work;  the  Arabesque,  the  Blumen- 
stiick,  the  marvelous  and  too  seldom  played 
Humoreske,  opus  20,  every  one  throbbing  with 
feeling;  the  eight  Novelletten,  almost,  but  not 
quite  successful  attempts  at  a  new  form;  the 
genial  but  unsatisfactory  G -minor  Sonata,  the 
Nachtstiicke,  and  the  Vienna  Carnaval,  opus  26, 
are  not  all  of  these  the  unpremeditated  out- 
pourings of  a  genuine  poet,  a  poet  of  sensibiUty, 
of  exquisite  feeling? 

I  must  not  forget  those  idylls  of  childhood,  the 
Kinderscenen,  the  half-crazy  Kreisleriana,  true 
soul-states,  nor  the  Fantasie,  opus  17,  which  lacks 
a  movement  to  make  it  an  organic  whole.  Con- 
sider the  little  pieces,  like  the  three  romances, 

100 


SCHUMANN:  A  VANISHING  STAR 

opus  28,  the  opus  32,  the  Album  for  the  Young ^ 
opus  68i  the  four  fugues,  four  marches,  the 
Waldscenen — Oh,  never-to-be-forgotten  Vogel 
als  Prophet  and  Trock'ne  Blumen — the  Concert- 
stuck,  opus  92,  the  second  Album  for  the  Young, 
the  Three  Fantasy  Pieces,  opus  111,  the  Bunte 
Blatter — do  you  recall  the  one  in  F-sharp  minor 
so  miraculously  varied  by  Brahms,  or  that  appeal- 
ing one  in  A-flat?  The  Albumbldtter,  opus  124, 
the  seven  pieces  in  fughetta  form,  the  never- 
played  Concert  allegro  in  D -minor,  opus  134, 
or  the  two  posthumous  works,  the  Scherzo  and 
the  Presto  Passionata. 

Have  I  forgotten  any?  No  doubt.  I  am 
growing  weary,  weary  of  all  this  music,  opiate 
music,  prismatic  music,  "dreary  music" — as 
Schumann  himself  called  his  early  stuff — and 
the  somber  peristaltic  music  of  his  ''lonesome, 
latter  years."  Schumann  is  now  for  the  very 
young,  for  the  self-illuded.  We  care  more — 
being  sturdy  realists — for  architecture  today. 
These  crepuscular  visions,  these  adventures  of 
the  timid  soul  on  sad  white  nights,  these  soft 
croonings  of  love  and  sentiment  are  out  of  joint 
with  the  days  of  electricity  and  the  worship  of  the 
golden  calf.  Do  not  ask  yourself  with  cynical 
airs  if  Schumann  is  not,  after  all,  second-rate,  but 
rather,  when  you  are  in  the  mood,  enter  his  house 

lOI 


OLD   FOGY 

of  dreams,  his  home  beautiful,  and  rest  your 
nerves.  Robert  Schumann  may  not  sip  am- 
brosial nectar  with  the  gods  in  highest  Valhall, 
but  he  served  his  generation ;  above  all,  he  made 
happy  one  noble  woman.  When  his  music  is 
shelved  and  forgotten,  the  name  of  the  Schu- 
manns  will  stand  for  that  rarest  of  blessings, 
conjugal  felicity. 

Z02 


xn 

"WHEN    I    PLAYED    FOR    LISZT" 

TO  write  from  Bayreuth  in  the  spring-time  as 
Wagner  sleeps  calmly  in  the  backyard  of 
Wahnfried,  without  a  hint  of  his  music  in 
the  air,  is  giving  me  one  of  the  deepest  satisfac- 
tions of  my  existence.  How  came  you  in  Bay- 
reuth, and,  of  all  seasons  in  the  year,  the  spring? 
The  answer  may  astonish  you;  indeed,  I  am  as- 
tonished myself  when  I  think  of  it.  Liszt, 
Franz  Liszt,  greatest  of  pianists — after  Thalberg 
— greatest  of  modern  composers — after  no  one 
— Liszt  lies  out  here  in  the  cemetery  on  the 
Erlangerstrasse,  and  to  visit  that  forlorn  pagoda 
designed  by  his  grandson  Siegfried  Wagner,  I 
left  my  comfortable  lodgings  in  Munich  and 
traveled  an  entire  day. 

Now  let  me  whisper  something  in  your  ear — 
I  once  studied  with  Liszt  at  Weimar!  Does 
this  seem  incredible  to  you?  An  adorer  of 
Thalberg,  nevertheless,  once  upon  a  time  I 
pulled  up  stakes  at  Paris  and  went  to  the  abode 
of  Liszt  and  played  for  him  exactly  once.  This 
was  a  half -century  ago.  I  carried  letters  from  a 
well-known  Parisian  music  publisher,  Liszt's 
103 


OLD   FOGY 

own,  and  was  therefore  accorded  a  hearing. 
Well  do  I  recall  the  day,  a  bright  one  in  April. 
His  Serene  Highness  was  at  that  time  Uving  on 
the  Altenberg,  and  to  see  him  I  was  forced  to  as 
much  patience  and  diplomacy  as  would  have 
gained  me  admittance  to  a  royal  household. 

Endlich,  the  fatal  moment  arrived.  Sur- 
rounded by  a  band  of  disciples,  crazy  fellows  all 
— I  discovered  among  the  rest  the  little  figure  of 
Karl  Tausig — the  great  man  entered  the  saal 
where  I  tremblingly  sat.  He  was  very  amiable. 
He  read  the  letters  I  timidly  presented  him,  and 
then,  slapping  me  on  the  back  with  an  expression 
of  bonhomiey  he  cried  aloud  in  French:  ^^Tiens! 
let  us  hear  what  this  admirer  of  my  old  friend 
Thalberg  has  to  say  for  himself  on  the  keyboard!" 
I  did  not  miss  the  veiled  irony  of  the  speech,  the 
word  friend  being  ever  so  lightly  underlined;  I 
knew  of  the  famous  Liszt-Thalberg  duello ^  during 
which  so  much  music  and  ink  had  been  spilt. 

But  my  agony!  The  via  dolorosa  I  traversed 
from  my  chair  to  the  piano!  Since  then  the 
modem  school  of  painter-impressionists  has  come 
into  fashion.  I  understand  perfectly  the  mental, 
may  I  say  the  optical,  attitude  of  these  artists  to 
landscape  subjects.  They  must  gaze  upon  a  tree, 
a  house,  a  cow,  with  their  nerves  at  highest 
tension  until  ever3rthing  quivers;  the  sky  is 
104 


''WHEN  I  PLAYED  FOR  LISZT" 

bathed  in  magnetic  rays,  the  background  trem- 
bles as  it  does  in  Ufe.  So  to  me  was  the  lofty 
chamber  wherein  I  stood  on  that  fateful  after- 
noon. Liszt,  with  his  powerful  profile,  the  profile 
of  an  Indian  chieftain,  lounged  in  the  window  em- 
brasure, the  Hght  streaking  his  hair,  gray  and 
brown,  and  silhouetting  his  brow,  nose,  and 
projecting  chin.  He  alone  was  the  illuminated 
focus  of  this  picture  which,  after  a  half-century, 
is  brilliantly  burnt  into  my  memory.  His  pupils 
were  mere  wraiths  floating  in  a  misty  dream, 
with  malicious  white  points  of  light  for  eyes.  And 
I  felt  like  a  disembodied  being  in  this  spectral 
atmosphere. 

Yet  urged  by  an  hypnotic  will  I  went  to  the 
piano,  lifted  the  fall-board,  and  in  my  misery  I 
actually  paused  to  read  the  maker's  name.  A 
whisper,  a  smothered  chuckle,  and  a  voice  utter- 
ing these  words:  *'He  must  have  begun  as  a 
piano-salesman,"  further  disconcerted  me.  I 
fell  on  to  the  seat  and  dropped  my  fingers  upon 
the  keys.  Facing  me  was  the  Ary  Scheffer 
portrait  of  Chopin,  and  without  knowing  why  I 
began  the  weaving  Prelude  in  D-major.  My 
insides  shook  like  a  bowl  of  jelly;  yet  I  was 
outwardly  as  calm  as  the  growing  grass.  My 
hands  did  not  falter  and  the  music  seemed  to 
ooze  from  my  wrists.  I  had  not  studied  in  vain 
105 


OLD   FOGY 

Thalberg's  Art  of  Singing  on  the  Piano.  I 
finished.    There  was  a  murmur;  nothing  more. 

Then  Liszt's  voice  cut  the  air: 

"I  expected  Thalberg's  tremolo  study,"  he 
said.    I  took  the  hint  and  arose. 

He  permitted  me  to  kiss  his  hand,  and,  with- 
out stopping  for  my  hat  and  walking-stick  in 
the  antechamber,  I  went  away  to  my  lodgings. 
Later  I  sent  a  servant  for  the  forgotten  articles, 
and  the  evening  saw  me  in  a  diligence  miles  from 
Weimar.    But  I  had  played  for  Liszt! 

Now,  the  moral  of  all  this  is  that  my  testimony 
furthermore  adds  to  the  growing  mystery  of 
Franz  Liszt.  He  heard  himdreds  of  such  pian- 
ists of  my  caliber,  and,  while  he  never  committed 
himself — for  he  was  usually  too  kind-hearted  to 
wotmd  mediocrity  with  cruel  criticism,  yet  he 
seldom  spoke  the  imique  word  except  to  such 
men  as  Rubinstein,  Tausig,  Josefify,  d'Albert, 
Rosenthal,  or  von  Biilow.  A  miraculous  sort  of 
a  man,  Liszt  was  ever  pouring  himself  out  upon 
the  world,  body,  soul,  brains,  art,  purse — all 
were  at  the  service  of  his  fellow-beings.  That 
he  was  imposed  upon  is  a  matter  of  course ;  that 
he  never  did  an  unkind  act  in  his  life  proves 
him  to  have  been  Cardinal  Newman's  definition 
of  a  gentleman:  "One  who  never  inflicts  pain." 
And  only  now  is  the  real  significance  of  the  man 
1 06 


*'WHEN  I  PLAYED  FOR  LISZT" 

as  a  composer  beginning  to  be  revealed.  Like  a 
comet  he  swept  the  heavens  of  his  early  youth. 
He  was  a  marvelous  virtuoso  who  mistook  the 
piano  for  an  orchestra  and  often  confounded  the 
orchestra  with  the  piano.  As  a  pianist  pure  and 
simple  I  prefer  Sigismimd  Thalberg;  but,  as  a 
composer,  as  a  man,  an  extraordinary  personality, 
Liszt  quite  filled  my  firmament. 

Setting  aside  those  operatic  arrangements  and 
those  clever,  noisy  Hungarian  Rhapsodies,  what  a 
wealth  of  piano-music  has  not  this  man  disclosed 
to  us.  Calmly  read  the  thematic  catalog  of 
Breitkopf  and  Hartel  and  you  will  be  amazed  at 
its  variety.  Liszt  has  paraphrased  inimitably 
songs  by  Schubert,  Schumann,  and  Robert 
Franz,  in  which  the  perfumed  flower  of  the  com- 
poser's thoughts  is  never  smothered  by  passage- 
work.  Consider  the  delicious  etude  Au  bord 
d'une  Source^  or  the  Sonnets  After  Petrarch,  or 
those  beautiful  concert-studies  in  D-flat,  F- 
minor,  and  A-flat;  are  they  not  models  of  genuine 
piano-music!  The  settings  of  Schubert  marches 
Hanslick  declared  are  marvels ;  and  the  Transcen- 
dental Studies!  Are  not  keyboard  limitations 
compassed?  Chopin,  a  sick  man  physically, 
never  dared  as  did  Liszt.  One  was  an  aeolian- 
harp,  the  other  a  hurricane.  I  never  attempted 
to  play  these  studies  in  their  revised  form;  I 
107 


OLD   FOGY 

content  myself  with  the  first  sketches  published 
as  an  opus  1.  There  the  nucleus  of  each  etude 
may  be  seen.  Later  Liszt  expanded  the  croquis 
into  elaborate  frescoes.  And  yet  they  say  that 
he  had  no  thematic  invention! 

Take  up  his  B-minor  sonata.  Despite  its 
length,  an  unheavenly  length,  it  is  one  of  the 
great  works  of  piano-literature  fit  to  rank  with 
Beethoven's  most  sublime  sonatas.  It  is  epical. 
Have  you  heard  Friedheim  or  Burmeister  play  it? 
I  had  hoped  that  Liszt  would  vouchsafe  me  a 
performance,  but  you  have  seen  that  I  had  not  the 
courage  to  return  to  him.  Besides,  I  wasn't 
invited.  Once  in  Paris  a  Liszt  pupil,  George 
Leitert,  played  for  me  the  Dante  Sonata,  a  com- 
position I  heard  thirty  years  later  from  the  fingers 
of  Arthur  Friedheim.  It  is  the  Divine  Comedy 
compressed  within  the  limits  of  a  piano-piece. 
What  folly,  I  hear  some  one  say!  Not  at  all. 
In  several  of  Chopin's  Preludes — ^his  supreme 
music — I  have  caught  reflections  of  the  sun,  the 
moon,  and  the  starry  beams  that  one  glimpses  in 
lonely  midnight  pools.  If  Chopin  could  mirror 
the  cosmos  in  twenty  bars,  why  should  not  a 
greater  tone-poet  imprison  behind  the  bars  of  his 
music  the  subtle  soul  of  Dante? 

To  view  the  range,  the  universaUty  of  Liszt's 
genius,  it  is  only  necessary  to  play  such  a  tiny 
io8 


"WHEN  I  PLAYED  FOR  LISZT" 

piano-composition,  Eclogue^  from  Les  Annies  de 
Pelirinage  and  then  hear  his  Faust  Symphony^ 
his  Dante  Symphony,  his  Symphonic  Poems. 
There's  a  man  for  you!  as  Abraham  Lincohi  once 
said  of  Walt  Whitman.  After  carefully  listening 
to  the  Faust  Symphony  it  dawns  on  you  that  you 
have  heard  all  this  music  elsewhere,  filed  out, 
triturated,  cut  into  handy,  digestible  fragments; 
in  a  word,  dressed  up  for  operatic  consumption, 
popularized.  Yes,  Richard  Wagner  dipped  his 
greedy  fingers  into  Liszt's  scores  as  well  as  into 
his  purse.  He  borrowed  from  the  pure  Rhine- 
gold  hoard  of  the  Hungarian's  genius,  and  forgot 
to  credit  the  original.  In  music  there  are  no 
quotation  marks.  That  is  the  reason  borrowing 
has  been  in  vogue  from  Handel  down. 

The  Ring  of  the  Nibelungs  would  not  be  heard 
today  if  Liszt  had  not  written  its  theme  in  his 
Faust  Symphony.  Parsifal  is  altogether  Lisztian, 
and  a  German  writer  on  musical  esthetics  has 
pointed  out  recently,  theme  for  theme,  resem- 
blance for  resemblance,  in  this  Liszt-Wagner 
Verhaltniss.  Wagner  owed  everything  to  Liszt — 
from  money  to  his  wife,  success,  and  art.  A 
wonderful  white  soul  was  Franz  Liszt.  And  he  is 
only  coming  into  his  kingdom  as  a  composer. 
Poor,  petty,  narrow-minded  humanity  could  not 
realize  that  because  a  man  was  a  pianist  among 
109 


OLD   FOGY 

pianists,  he  might  be  a  composer  among  com- 
posers. I  made  the  error  myself.  I,  too, 
thought  that  the  velvet  touch  of  Thalberg  was 
more  admirable  than  the  mailed  warrior  fist  of 
Liszt.  It  is  a  mistake.  And  now,  plumped  on 
my  knees  in  Liszt's  Ba3rreuth  tomb,  I  acknowledge 
my  faults.  Yes,  he  was  a  greater  pianist  than 
Thalberg.  Can  an  old-fashioned  fellow  say 
more? 

no 


xm 

WAGNER    OPERA   IN   NEW   YORK 

WITH  genuine  joy  I  sit  once  more  in  my  old 
arm-chair  and  watch  the  brawling  Wis- 
sahickon  Creek,  its  banks  draped  with 
snow,  while  overhead  the  sky  seems  so  friendlyand 
blue.  I  am  at  Dussek  Villa,  I  am  at  home ;  and 
I  reproach  myself  for  having  been  such  a  fool  as 
ever  to  wander  from  it.  Being  a  fussy  but  con- 
scientious old  bachelor,  I  scold  myself  when  I 
am  in  the  wrong,  thus  making  up  for  the  clatter- 
ing tongue  of  an  active  wife.  As  I  once  related 
to  you,  I  recently  went  to  New  York,  and  there 
encountered  sundry  adventures,  not  all  of  them 
of  a  diverting  nature.  One  you  know,  and  it 
reeks  in  my  memory  with  stale  cigars,  witless 
talk,  and  all  the  other  monotonous  S3mibols  of 
Bohemia.  Ah,  that  blessed  Bohemia,  whose 
coast  no  man  ever  explored  except  gentle  Will 
Shakespeare!  It  is  no-man's-land;  never  was 
and  never  will  be.  Its  misty,  alluring  signals 
have  shipwrecked  many  an  artistic  mariner, 
and — but  pshaw!  I'm  too  old  to  moralize  this 
way.  Only  young  people  moralize.  It  is  their 
prerogative.  When  they  live,  when  they  fathom 
good  and  evil  and  their  mysteries,  charity  will 
III 


OLD  FOGY 

check  their  tongues,  so  I  shall  say  no  more  of 
Bohemia.  What  I  saw  of  it  further  convinced 
me  of  its  imdesirability,  of  its  inutility. 

And  now  to  my  tale,  now  to  finish  forever  the 
story  of  my  experiences  in  Gotham!  I  de- 
claimed violently  against  Tchaikovsky  to  my 
acquaintances  of  the  hour,  because  my  dislike 
to  him  is  deep  rooted ;  but  I  had  still  to  encounter 
another  modem  musician,  who  sent  me  home 
with  a  headache,  with  nerves  all  jangling,  a 
stomach  soured,  and  my  whole  esthetic  system 
topsy-turveyed  and  sorely  wrenched.  I  heard 
for  the  first  time  Richard  Wagner's  Die  Walkure^ 
and  I've  been  sick  ever  since. 

I  felt,  with  Louis  Ehlert,  that  another  such  a 
performance  would  release  my  feeble  spirit  from 
its  fleshly  vestment  and  send  it  soaring  to  the 
angels,  for  surely  all  my  sins  would  be  wiped  out, 
expiated,  by  the  severe  penance  endured. 

Not  feeling  quite  myself  the  day  after  my  ex- 
periences with  the  music  journalists,  I  strolled 
up  Broadway,  and,  passing  the  opera-house, 
inspected  the  menu  for  the  evening.  I  read, 
"Die  Walkure,  with  a  grand  cast,"  and  I  fell  to 
wondering  what  the  word  Walkure  meant. 
I  have  an  old-fashioned  acquaintance  with 
German,  but  never  read  a  line  or  heard  a  word  of 
Wagner's.    Oh,  yes;  I  forget  the  overture  to 

\  112 


WAGNER  OPERA  IN  NEW  YORK 

Rienziy  which  always  struck  me  as  noisy  and 
quite  in  Meyerbeer's  most  vicious  manner. 
But  the  Richard  Wagner,  the  later  Wagner,  I 
read  so  much  about  in  the  newspapers,  I  knew 
nothing  of.  I  do  now.  I  wish  I  didn't. 
'  Says  I  to  myself,  "Here's  a  chance  to  hear  this 
Walkover  opera.  So  now  or  never."  I  went  in, 
and,  planking  my  dollar  down,  I  said,  "Give  me 
the  best  seat  you  have."  "Other  box-office,  on 
40th  Street,  please,  for  gallery."  I  was  taken 
aback.  "What!"  I  exclaimed,  "do  you  ask  a 
whole  dollar  for  a  gallery  seat?  How  much, 
pray,  for  one  down-stairs?"  The  young  man 
looked  at  me  curiously,  but  politely  replied, 
"Five  dollars,  and  they  are  all  sold  out."  I 
went  outside  and  took  off  my  hat  to  cool  my 
head.  Five  good  dollars — a  whole  week's  living 
and  more— to  listen  to  a  Wagner  opera!  Whew! 
It  must  be  mighty  good  music.  Why  I  never 
paid  more  than  twenty-five  cents  to  hear  Mozart's 
Magic  Flute,  and  with  Carlotta,  Patti,  Karl 
Formes,  and — but  what's  the  use  of  reminis- 
cences? 

I  could  not  make  up  my  mind  to  spend  so  much 
money  and  I  walked  to  Central  Park,  took  several 
turns,  and  then  came  down  town  again.  My 
mind  was  made  up.  I  went  boldly  to  the  box- 
office  and  encountered  the  same  young  man. 
"3 


OLD  FOGY 

**Look  here,  my  friend,"  I  said,  "I  didn't  ask 
you  for  a  private  box,  but  just  a  plain  seat,  one 
seat."  **Sold  out,"  he  laconically  replied  and 
retired.  Then  I  heard  suspicious  laughter. 
Rather  dazed,  I  walked  slowly  to  the  sidewalk 
and  was  grabbed— there  is  no  other  word — 
by  several  rough  men  with  tickets  and  big 
bunches  of  greenbacks  in  their  grimy  fists. 
"Tickets,  tickets,  fine  seats  for  De  Volkyure 
tonight."  They  yelled  at  me  and  I  felt  as  if  I 
were  in  the  clutches  of  the  "barkers"  of  a  down- 
town clothing-house.  I  saw  my  chance  and 
began  dickering.  At  first  I  was  asked  fifteen 
dollars  a  seat,  but  seeing  that  I  am  apoplectic  by 
temperament  they  came  down  to  ten.  I  asked 
why  this  enormous  tariff  and  was  told  that  Van 
Dyck,  Eames,  Nordica,  Van  Rooy,  and  heaven 
knows  who  besides,  were  in  the  cast.  That 
settled  it.  I  bargained  and  wrangled  and  finally 
escaped  with  a  seat  in  the  orchestra  for  seven 
dollars!  Later  I  discovered  it  was  not  only  in 
the  orchestra,  but  quite  near  the  orchestra,  and 
on  the  brass  and  big  drum  side. 

When  I  reached  the  opera-house  after  my  plain 
supper  of  ham  and  eggs  and  tea  it  must  have  been 
seven  o'clock.  I  was  told  to  be  early  and  I  was. 
No  one  else  was  except  the  ticket  speculators, 
who,  recognizing  me,  gave  me  another  hard  fight 
114 


WAGNER  OPERA  IN  NEW  YORK 

until  I  finally  called  a  policeman.  He  smiled 
and  told  me  to  walk  around  the  block  until  half- 
past  seven,  when  the  doors  opened.  But  I  was 
too  smart  and  foimd  my  way  back  and  ever3rthing 
open  at  7,15,  and  my  seat  occupied  by  an  over- 
coat. I  threw  it  into  the  orchestra  and  later 
there  was  a  fine  row  when  the  owner  returned. 
I  tried  to  explain,  but  the  man  was  mad,  and  I 
advised  him  to  go  to  his  last  home.  Why  even 
the  ushers  laughed.  At  7.45  there  were  a  few 
dressed  up  folks  down  stairs,  and  they  mostly 
stared  at  me,  for  I  kept  my  fur  cap  on  to  heat  my 
head,  and  my  suit,  the  best  one  I  have,  is  a  good, 
solid  pepper-and-salt  one.  I  didn't  mind  it  in 
the  least,  but  what  worried  me  was  the  libretto 
which  I  tried  to  glance  through  before  the  curtain 
rose.  In  vain.  The  story  would  not  come  clear, 
although  I  saw  I  was  in  trouble  when  I  read  that 
the  hero  and  heroine  were  brother  and  sister. 
Experience  has  taught  me  that  family  rows  are 
the  worst,  and  I  wondered  why  Wagner  chose 
such  a  dull,  old-fashioned  theme. 

The  orchestra  began  to  fill  up  and  there  was 
much  chattering  and  noise.  Then  a  little  fellow 
with  beard  and  eyeglasses  hopped  into  the  con- 
ductor's chair,  the  lights  were  tiimed  off,  and 
with  a  roar  like  a  storm  the  overture  began.  I 
tried  to  feel  thrilled,  but  couldn't.  I  had  expected 
"5 


OLD  FOGY 

a  new  art,  a  new  orchestration,  but  here  I  was  on 
familiar  ground,  so  familiar  that  presently  I  foimd 
myself  wondering  why  Wagner  had  orchestrated 
the  beginning  of  Schubert's  Erlking.  The  noise 
began  in  earnest  and  by  the  light  from  a  player's 
lamp  I  saw  that  the  prelude  was  intended  for  a 
storm.  **Ha!"  I  said,  "then  it  was  the  Erlking 
after  all."  The  curtain  rose  on  an  empty  stage 
with  a  big  tree  in  the  middle  and  a  fire  burning  on 
the  hearth. 

There  was  no  pause  in  the  music  at  the  end 
of  the  overture — did  it  really  end? — which  I 
thought  funny.  Then  a  man  with  big  whiskers, 
wearing  the  skin  of  an  animal,  staggered  in  and 
fell  before  the  fire.  He  seemed  tired  out  and  the 
music  had  a  tired  feeling  too.  A  woman  dressed 
in  white  entered  and  after  staring  for  twenty 
bars  got  him  a  drink  in  a  ram's  horn.  The 
music  kept  right  on  as  if  it  were  a  symphony  and 
not  an  opera.  The  yelling  from  the  pair  was 
awful,  at  least  so  it  seemed  to  me.  It  appears 
that  they  were  having  family  troubles  and  didn't 
know  their  own  names.  Then  the  orchestra 
began  stamping  and  knocking,  and  a  fellow  with 
hawk  wings  in  his  helmet,  a  spear  and  a  beard 
entered,  and  some  one  next  to  me  said  "There's 
the  Hunding  motive."  Now  I  know  my  German, 
but  I  saw  no  dog,  besides,  what  motive  could  the 
ii6 


WAGNER  OPERA  IN  NEW  YORK 

animal  have  had.  The  three  people,  a  savage 
crew,  sat  down  and  talked  to  music,  just  plain 
talk,  for  I  didn't  hear  a  solitary  tune.  The  girl 
went  to  bed  and  the  man  followed.  The  tenor 
had  a  long  scene  alone  and  the  girl  came  back. 
They  must  have  foimd  out  their  names,  for  they 
embraced  and  after  pulling  an  old  sword  out  of 
the  tree,  they  said  a  lot  and  went  away.  I  was 
glad  they  had  patched  up  the  family  trouble,  but 
what  became  of  the  big,  black-bearded  fellow 
with  the  hawk  wings  in  his  helmet? 

The  next  act  upset  me  terribly.  I  read  my 
book,  but  couldn't  make  out  why,  if  Wotan  was 
the  God  of  all  and  high  much-a-muck,  he  didn't 
smash  all  his  enemies,  especially  that  cranky 
old  woman  of  his,  Fricka?  V/hat  a  pretty  name! 
I  got  quite  excited  when  Nordica  sang  a  yelling 
sort  of  a  scream  high  up  on  the  rocks.  Not  at 
the  music,  however,  but  I  expected  her  to  fall 
over  and  break  her  neck.  She  didn't,  and  shout- 
ing Wagner's  music  at  that.  Why  it  would  twist 
the  neck  of  a  giraffe!  Quite  at  sea,  I  saw  the 
brother  and  sister  come  in  and  violently  quarrel, 
and  Nordica  return  and  sing  a  slumber  song,  for  the 
siste'r  slept  and  the  brother  looked  cross.  Then 
more  gloom  and  a  duel  up  in  the  clouds,  and  once 
more  the  curtain  fell.  I  heard  the  celebrated  Ride 
of  the  Valkyries  and  wondered  if  it  was  music  or 
117 


OLD  FOGY 

just  a  stable  full  of  crazy  colts  neighing  for  oats. 
Dean  Swift's  Gulliver  would  have  said  the  latter. 
I  thought  so.  The  howling  of  the  circus  girls  up 
on  the  rocks  paralyzed  my  faculties. 

It  was  a  hideous  satumaUa,  and  deafened  by 
the  brass  and  percussion  instruments  I  tried  to 
get  away,  but  my  neighbors  protested  and  I  was 
forced  to  sit  and  suffer.  What  followed  was 
incomprehensible.  The  crazy  amazons,  the 
Walk-your-horses,  and  the  disagreeable  Wotan 
kept  things  in  a  perfect  uproar  for  half  an  hour. 
Then  the  stage  cleared  and  the  father,  after 
lecturing  his  daughter,  put  her  to  sleep  under  a 
tree.  He  must  have  been  a  mesmerist.  Red 
fire  ran  over  the  stage,  steam  hissed,  the  or- 
chestra rattled,  and  the  bass  roared.  Finally, 
to  tinkling  bells  and  fourth  of  July  fireworks,  the 
curtain  fell  on  the  silliest  pantomime  I  ever  saw. 

The  music?  Ah,  don't  ask  me  now!  Wait 
imtil  my  nerves  get  settled.  It  never  stopped, 
and  fast  as  it  reeled  off  I  recognized  Bach, 
Mozart,  Beethoven,  Schumann,  Weber — lots 
of  Weber — Marschner,  and  Chopin.  Yes,  Cho- 
pin! The  orchestration  seemed  overwrought 
and  coarse  and  the  form — well,  formlessness  is 
the  only  word  to  describe  it.  There  was  an 
infernal  sort  of  skill  in  the  instrumentation  at 
times,  a  short-breathed  juggling  with  other  men's 
ii8 


WAGNER  OPERA  IN  NEW  YORK 

ideas,  but  no  development,  no  final  cadence. 
Everything  in  suspension  until  my  ears  fairly 
longed  for  one  perfect  resolution.  Even  in  the 
Spring  Song  it  does  not  occur.  That  tune  is 
suspiciously  Italian,  for  all  Wagner's  dislike  of 
Italy. 

And  this  is  your  operatic  hero  today!  This  is 
your  maker  of  music  dramas!  Pooh!  it  is  neither 
fish  nor  fiesh  nor  good  red  herring.  Give  me  one 
page  from  the  Marriage  of  Figaro  or  the  finale  to 
Don  Giovanni  and  I  will  show  you  divine  melody 
and  great  dramatic  writing!  But  I'm  old- 
fashioned,  I  suppose.  I  have  since  been  told  the 
real  story  of  Die  Walkiire  and  am  dumfounded. 
It  is  all  worse  than  I  expected.  Give  me  my 
Dussek,  give  me  Mozart,  let  me  breathe  pure, 
sweet  air  after  this  hot-house  music  with  its 
debauch  of  color,  sound,  action,  and  morals. 
I  must  have  the  grip,  because  even  now  as  I 
write  my  mind  seems  tainted  with  the  awful 
music  of  Richard  Wagner,  the  arch  fiend  of 
music.  I  shall  send  for  the  doctor  in  the  morn- 
ing. 

Z19 


XIV 
A  VISIT  TO  THE  PARIS  CONSERVATOIRE 

I  FEEL  very  much  like  the  tutor  of  Prince 
Karl  Heinrich  in  the  pretty  play  Old  Heidel- 
berg. After  a  long  absence  he  returned  to 
Heidelberg  where  his  student  life  had  been 
happy — or  at  least  had  seemed  so  to  him  in  the 
latter,  lonesome  years.  Behold,  he  found  the 
same  reckless  crowd,  swaggering,  carousing, 
flirting,  dueling,  debt-making,  love-making,  and 
occasionally  studying.  He  liked  it  so  well  that, 
if  I  mistake  not,  the  place  killed  him.  I  felt 
very  much  in  the  same  position  as  the  Doctor 
Juttner  of  the  play  when  I  returned  to  Paris 
last  summer.  The  Conservatoire  is  still  in  its 
old,  crooked,  narrow  street;  it  is  still  a  noisy 
sheol  as  one  enters  at  the  gate ;  and  there  is  still 
the  same  old  gang  of  callow  youths  and  extremely 
pert  misses  going  and  coming.  Only  they  all 
seem  more  sophisticated  nowadays.  They — 
naturally  enough — know  more  than  their  daddies, 
and  they  show  it.  As  they  brushed  past,  literally 
elbowing  me,  they  seemed  contemptuously  arro- 
gant in  their  youthful  exuberance.  And  yet,  and 
yet — ego  in  Arcadia! 

120 


A  VISIT  TO  THE  PARIS  CONSERVATOIRE 

I  stood  in  the  quadrangle  and  dreamed.  Forty 
years  ago — or  is  it  fifty? — I  had  stood  there  be- 
fore ;  but  it  was  in  the  chilly  month  of  November. 
I  was  young  then,  and  I  was  very  ambitious. 
The  little  Ohio  town  whose  obscurity  I  had  hoped 
to  transform  into  fame — ah!  these  mad  dreams 
of  egotistical  boyhood — did  not  resent  my  leav- 
ing it.  It  still  stands  where  it  was — stands  still. 
I  seem  to  have  gone  on,  and  yet  I  return  to  that 
little,  dull,  dilapidated  tov/n  in  my  thoughts,  for 
it  was  there  I  enjoyed  the  purple  visions  of  music, 
where  I  fondly  believed  that  I,  too,  might  go 
forth  into  the  world  and  make  harmony.  I  did; 
but  my  harmony  exercises  were  always  returned 
full  of  blue  marks.  Such  is  life — and  its  lead- 
pencil  ironies! 

To  be  precise  as  well  as  concise,  I  stood  in  the 
concierge's  bureau  some  forty  years  ago  and  won- 
dered if  the  secretary  would  see  me.  He  did. 
After  he  had  tortured  me  as  to  my  age,  parentage, 
nationality,  qualifications,  even  personal  habits, 
it  occurred  to  him  to  ask  me  what  I  wanted  in 
Paris.  I  told  him,  readily  enough,  that  I  had 
crossed  the  yeasty  Atlantic  in  a  sailing  vessel — 
for  motives  of  economy — that  I  might  study  the 
pianoforte  in  Paris.  I  remember  that  I  also 
naively  inquired  the  hours  when  M.  Fran9ois 
Liszt — he  called  him  Litz! — gave  his  lessons. 

121 


OLD  FOGY 

The  secretary  was  too  polite  to  laugh  at  my 
provmcial  ignorance,  but  he  coughed  violently 
several  times.  Then  I  was  informed  that  M. 
Liszt  never  gave  piano-lessons  any  time,  any- 
where; that  he  was  to  be  found  in  Weimar;  but 
only  by  passed  grand  masters  of  the  art  of  piano- 
forte-playing. Still  undaunted,  I  insisted  on 
entering  my  name  amongst  those  who  would 
compete  at  the  forthcoming  public  examination. 
I  was,  as  I  said  before,  very  yoimg,  very  inex- 
perienced, and  I  was  alone,  with  just  enough 
money  to  keep  me  for  one  year. 

I  Uved  in  a  fourth-story  garret  in  a  little  alley — 
you  couldn't  call  it  a  street — just  off  the  exterior 
boulevard.  Whether  it  was  the  Clichy  or  the 
BatignoUes  doesn't  matter  very  much  now.  How 
I  lived  was  another  affair — and  also  an  object 
lesson  for  the  young  fellows  who  go  abroad  now- 
adays equipped  with  money,  with  clothes,  with 
everything  except  humility.  Judging  from  my 
weekly  expenses  in  my  native  town,  I  supposed 
that  Paris  could  not  be  very  much  higher  in  its 
living.  So  I  took  with  me  $600  in  gold,  which, 
partially  an  inheritance,  partially  saved  and  bor- 
rowed, was  to  last  me  two  years.  How  I  expected 
to  get  home  was  one  of  those  things  that  I  dared 
not  reflect  upon.  Sufficient  for  the  day  are  the 
finger  exercises  thereof!    I  paid  $8  a  month — 

122 


A  VISIT  TO  THE  PARIS  CONSERVATOIRE 

about  40  francs — for  my  lodgings.  Heavens — 
what  a  room!  It  was  so  small  that  I  imdressed 
and  dressed  in  the  hall,  always  dark,  for  the 
reason  that  my  bed,  bureau,  trunk,  and  up- 
right piano  quite  crowded  me  out  of  the  apart- 
ment. I  could  lie  in  bed  and  by  reaching  out 
my  hands  touch  the  keyboard  of  the  little 
rattletrap  of  an  instrument.  But  it  was  a  piano, 
after  all,  and  at  it  I  could  weave  my  musical 
dreams. 

I  forgot  to  tell  you  that  my  eating  and  drinking 
did  not  cut  important  figures  in  my  scheme  of 
living.  I  had  made  up  my  mind  early  in  my 
career  that  tobacco  and  beer  were  for  million- 
aires. Cofifee  was  the  grand  consoler,  and  with 
coffee,  soup,  bread,  I  managed  to  get  through 
my  work.  I  ate  at  a  cafe  frequented  by  cabmen, 
and  for  ten  cents  I  was  given  soup,  the  meat  of 
the  soup— tasteless  stuff — bread,  and  a  potato. 
What  more  did  an  ambitious  young  man  want? 
There  were  many  not  so  well  off  as  I.  I  took 
two  meals  a  day,  the  first,  coffee  and  milk  with 
a  roll.  Then  I  starved  until  dark  for  my  soup 
meat.  I  recall  wintry  days  when  I  stayed  in  bed 
to  keep  warm,  for  I  never  could  indulge  in  the 
luxury  of  fire,  and  with  a  pillow  on  my  stomach 
I  did  my  harmony  lessons.  The  pillow,  need 
I  add,  was  to  suppress  the  latent  pangs  of  juvenile 
123 


OLD  FOGY 

appetite.  My  one  sorrow  was  my  washing. 
With  my  means,  fresh  linen  was  out  of  the 
question.  A  flannel  shirt,  one ;  socks  at  intervals, 
and  a  silk  handkerchief,  my  sole  luxury,  was  the 
full  extent  of  my  wardrobe. 

When  the  wet  rain  splashed  my  face  as  I  walked 
the  boulevards  on  the  morning  of  the  examination 
I  was  not  cast  down.  I  had  determined  to  do  or 
die.  With  a  hundred  of  my  sort,  both  sexes  and 
varying  nationality,  I  was  penned  up  in  a  room, 
one  door  of  which  opened  on  the  stage  of  the 
Conservatory  theater.  I  looked  about  me. 
Giggling  girls  in  crumpled  white  dresses  stalked 
up  and  down  humming  their  arias,  while  shabbily 
dressed  mothers  gazed  admiringly  at  them.  Big 
boys  and  little,  bad  boys  and  good,  slim,  fat, 
stupid,  shrewd  boys,  encircled  me,  and,  as  I  was 
mature  for  my  age,  joked  me  about  my  senile 
appearance.  I  had  a  numbered  card  in  my 
hand.  No.  13,  and  all  those  who  saw  it  shuddered, 
for  the  French  are  as  stupid  as  old-time  Southern 
"darkies."  Something  akin  to  the  expectant 
feeling  of  the  early  Christian  martjrs  was  ex- 
perienced by  all  of  us  as  a  number  was  called 
aloud  by  a  hoarse-voiced  Cerberus,  and  the 
victim  disappeared  through  the  narrow  door  lead- 
ing to  the  lions  in  the  arena.  At  last,  after  some 
squabbling  between  No.  14  and  No.  15,  both  of 
124 


A  VISIT  TO  THE  PARIS  CONSERVATOIRE 

whom  thought  they  had  precedence  over  No.  13, 
I  went  forth  to  my  fate. 

I  came  out  upon  a  drnily  lighted  stage  which 
held  two  grand  pianofortes  and  several  chairs. 
A  colorless-looking  individual  read  my  card  and 
with  marked  asperity  asked  for  my  music. 
Frightened,  I  told  him  I  had  brought  none. 
There  were  murmurings  and  suppressed  laughter 
in  the  dim  auditorium.  There  sat  the  judges — 
I  don't  know  how  many,  but  one  was  a  woman, 
and  I  hated  her  though  I  could  not  see  her. 
She  had  a  disagreeable  laugh,  and  she  let  it 
loose  when  the  assistant  professor  on  the  platform 
stumbled  over  the  syllables  of  my  very  Teutonic 
name.  I  explained  that  I  had  memorized  a 
Beethoven  sonata,  all  the  Beethoven  sonatas, 
and  that  was  the  reason  I  left  my  music  at  home. 
This  explanation  was  received  in  chilly  silence, 
though  I  did  not  fail  to  note  that  it  prejudiced  the 
interrogating  professor  against  me.  He  evidently 
took  me  for  a  superior  person,  and  he  then  and 
there  mentally  proposed  to  set  me  down  several 
pegs.  I  felt,  rather  than  saw,  all  this  in  the 
twinkling  of  an  eye.  I  sat  down  to  the  keyboard 
and  launched  forth  into  Beethoven's  first  Sonata 
in  F  minor f  a  favorite  of  mine.  Ominous  silence 
broken  by  the  tapping  of  a  nervous  lead  pencil  in 
the  hand  of  a  nervous  woman.  I  got  through  the 
125 


OLD  FOGY 

movement  and  then  a  voice  punctuated  the  still- 
ness. 

"Ah,  Mozart  is  so  easy!  Try  something  else!" 
And  then  I  made  my  second  mistake.  I  arose 
and,  bowing  to  the  invisible  one  in  the  gloom,  I 
said:  **That  was  not  Mozart,  but  Beethoven." 
There  was  an  explosion  of  laughter,  formidable, 
brutal.  The  feminine  voice  rose  above  it  all  in 
irritating  accents. 

"Impertinent!  And  what  a  silly  beard  he 
has!"  I  sat  down  in  despair,  plucking  at  my 
fluffy  chm-whiskers  and  wondering  if  they 
looked  as  frivolous  as  they  felt. 

Nudged  from  dismal  reverie,  I  saw  the  color- 
less professor  with  a  music  book  in  his  hand. 
He  placed  it  on  the  piano-desk  and  mumbled: 
"Very  indifferent.  Read  this  at  sight."  Puzzled 
by  the  miserable  light,  the  still  more  wretched 
typography,  I  peered  at  the  notes  as  peers  a 
miser  at  the  gold  he  is  soon  to  lose.  No  avail. 
My  vision  was  blurred,  my  fingers  leaden. 
Suddenly  I  noticed  that,  whether  through  mali- 
cious intent  or  stupid  carelessness,  the  book  was 
upside  down.  Now,  I  knew  my  Bach  fugues,  if 
I  may  say  it,  backward.  Something  familiar 
about  the  musical  text  told  me  that  before  me, 
inverted,  was  the  C-sharp  Major  Prelude  in  the 
first  book  of  the  Well-tempered  Clavichord. 
126 


A  VISIT  TO  THE  PARIS  CONSERVATOIRE 

Mechanically  my  fingers  began  that  most  de- 
licious and  Ught-hearted  of  caprices — I  did  not 
dare  to  touch  the  music — and  soon  I  was  rattling 
through  it,  all  my  thoughts  three  thousand  miles 
away  in  a  little  Ohio  town.  When  I  had  finished 
I  arose  in  grim  silence,  took  the  music,  held  it 
toward  the  chief  executioner,  and  said: 

"And  upside  down!" 

There  was  another  outburst,  and  again  that 
woman's  voice  was  heard: 

"What  a  comedian  is  this  young  Yankee!" 

I  left  the  stage  without  bowing,  jostled  the 
stupid  doorkeeper,  and  filed  through  the  room 
where  the  other  numbers  huddled  like  sheep  for 
the  slaughter.  Seizing  my  hat  I  went  out  into 
the  rain,  and  when  the  concierge  tried  to  stop  me 
I  shook  a  threatening  fist  at  him.  He  stepped 
back  in  a  fine  hurry,  I  assure  you.  When  I  came 
to  my  senses  I  found  myself  on  my  bed,  my  head 
buried  in  the  pillows.  Luckily  I  had  no  mirror, 
so  I  was  spared  the  sight  of  my  red,  mortified 
face.    That  night  I  slept  as  if  drugged. 

In  the  morning  a  huge  envelope  with  an 
official  seal  was  thrust  through  a  crack  in  my 
door — there  were  many — and  in  it  I  found  a 
notification  that  I  was  accepted  as  a  pupil  of 
the  Paris  Conservatoire.  What  a  dream  real- 
ized! But  only  to  be  shattered,  for,  so  I  was 
127 


OLD  FOGY 

further  informed,  I  had  succeeded  in  one  test 
and  failed  in  another — my  sight  reading  was 
not  up  to  the  high  standard  demanded.  No 
wonder!  Music  reversed,  and  my  fingers  me- 
chanically playing  could  be  hardly  called  a  fair 
sight-reading  trial.  Therefore,  continued  this 
implacable  document,  I  would  sit  for  a  year  in 
silence  watching  other  pupils  receiving  their 
instruction.  I  was  to  be  an  auditeury  a  Ustener 
— and  all  my  musical  castles  came  timibling 
about  my  ears! 

What  I  did  during  that  weary  year  of  waiting 
carmot  be  told  in  one  article;  suffice  it  to  say  I 
sat,  I  heard,  I  suffered.  If  music-students  of 
today  experience  kindred  trials  I  pity  them;  but 
somehow  or  other  I  fancy  they  do  not.  Luxury 
is  longed  for  too  much;  young  men  and  young 
women  will  not  make  the  sacrifices  for  art  we 
oldsters  did;  and  it  all  shows  in  the  shallow, 
superficial,  showy,  empty,  insincere  pianoforte- 
playing  of  the  day  and  hour. 
12S 


XV 
TONE    VERSUS    NOISE 

THE  tropical  weather  in  the  early  part  of  last 
month  set  a  dozen  problems  whizzing  in 
my  skull.  Near  my  bungalow  on  the  upper 
Wissahickon  were  several  young  men,  camping 
out  for  the  summer.  One  afternoon  I  was  playing 
with  great  gusto  a  lovely  sonata  by  Dussek — 
the  one  in  A-flat — when  I  heard  laughter,  and, 
rising,  I  went  to  the  window  in  an  angry  mood. 
Outside  were  two  smiling  faces,  the  patronizing 
faces  of  two  young  men. 

"Well!"  said  I,  rather  shortly. 

"It  was  like  a  whiff  from  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury," said  a  stout,  dark  young  fellow. 

"A  whiff  that  would  dissipate  the  musical 
malaria  of  this,"  I  cried,  for  I  saw  I  had  musicians 
to  deal  with.  There  was  hearty  laughter  at  this, 
and  as  young  laughter  warms  the  cockles  of  an 
old  man's  heart,  I  invited  the  pair  indoors,  and 
over  some  bottled  ale — I  despise  your  new-fan- 
gled slops — we  discussed  the  Fine  Arts.  It  is 
not  the  custom  nowadays  to  capitalize  the  arts, 
and  to  me  it  reveals  the  want  of  respect  in  this 
headlong  irreverent  generation.  To  return  to 
129 


OLD  FOGY 

my  mutton — to  my  sheep :  they  told  me  they  were 
pianists  from  New  York  or  thereabouts,  who  had 
conceived  the  notion  of  spending  the  summer  in 
a  tent. 

"And  what  of  your  practising?"  I  slyly  asked. 
Again  they  roared.  "Why,  old  boy,  you  must  be 
behind  the  times.  We  use  a  dumb  piano  the 
most  part  of  the  year,  and  have  brought  a  three- 
octave  one  along."  That  set  me  going.  "So 
you  spend  your  vacation  with  the  dumb,  expecting 
to  learn  to  speak,  and  yet  you  mock  me  because 
I  play  Dussek!  Let  me  inform  you,  my  young 
sirs,  that  this  quaint,  old-fashioned  music,  with 
its  faint  odor  of  the  rococo,  is  of  more  satisfying 
musical  value  than  all  your  modem  gymnasiums. 
Of  what  use,  pray,  is  your  superabundant  tech- 
nics if  you  can't  make  music?  Training  your 
muscles  and  memorizing,  you  say?  Fiddle- 
sticks! The  Well-tempered  Clavichord  for  one 
hour  a  day  is  of  more  value  to  a  pianist  technically 
and  musically  than  an  army  of  mechanical  de- 
vices. 

"I  never  see  a  latter-day  pianist  on  his  travels 
but  I  am  reminded  of  a  comedian  with  his  rouge- 
pot,  grease-paints,  wigs,  arms,  and  costumes. 
Without  them,  what  is  the  actor?  Without  his 
finger-boards  and  exercising  machines,  what  is 
the  pianist  of  today?  He  fears  to  stop  a  moment 
130 


TONE  VERSUS  NOISE 

because  his  rival  across  the  street  will  be  able 
to  play  the  double-thirds  study  of  Chopin  in 
quicker  tempo.  It  all  hinges  on  velocity.  This 
season  there  will  be  a  race  between  Rosenthal 
and  Sauer,  to  see  who  can  vomit  the  greater  num- 
ber of  notes.  Pleasing,  laudable  ambition,  is  it 
not?  In  my  time  a  piano  artist  read,  meditated, 
communed  much  with  nature,  slept  well,  ate  and 
drank  well,  saw  much  of  society,  and  all  his  life 
was  reflected  in  his  play.  There  was  sensibility 
— above  all,  sensibility — the  one  quality  absent 
from  the  performances  of  your  new  pianists.  I 
don't  mean  super-sickly  emotion,  nor  yet  sprawl- 
ing passion — the  passion  that  tears  the  wires  to 
tatters,  but  a  poetic  sensibility  that  infused 
every  bar  with  hiunanity.  To  this  .was  added  a 
healthy  tone  that  lifted  the  music  far  above 
anythmg  morbid  or  depressing." 

I  continued  in  this  strain  until  the  dinner-bell 
rang,  and  I  had  to  invite  my  guests  to  remain. 
Indeed,  I  was  not  sorry,  for  all  old  men  need  some 
one  to  talk  to  and  at,  else  they  fret  and  grow 
peevish.  Besides,  I  was  anxious  to  put  my 
young  masters  to  the  test.  I  have  a  grand  piano 
of  good  age,  with  a  sounding-board  like  a  fine- 
tempered  fiddle.  The  instrument,  an  American 
one,  I  handle  like  a  delicate  thoroughbred  horse, 
and,  as  my  playing  is  accompUshed  by  the  use  of 
131 


OLD  FOGY 

my  fingers  and  not  my  heels,  the  piano  does  not 
really  betray  its  years. 

We  dined  not  sumptuously  but  hberally,  and 
with  our  pipes  and  coffee  went  to  the  music  room. 
The  lads,  excited  by  my  criticisms  and  good  cheer, 
were  eager  for  a  demonstration  at  the  keyboard. 
So  was  I.  I  let  them  play  first.  This  is  what  I 
heard :  The  dark-skinned  youth,  who  looked  like 
the  priestly  and  uninteresting  Siloti,  sat  down 
and  began  idly  preluding.  He  had  good  fingers, 
but  they  were  spoiled  by  a  hammer-like  touch 
and  the  constant  use  of  forearm,  upper-arm,  and 
shoulder  pressure.  He  called  my  attention  to 
his  tone.  Tone!  He  made  every  individual 
wire  jangle,  and  I  trembled  for  my  smooth,  well- 
kept  action.  Then  he  began  the  B -minor  Ballade 
of  Liszt.  Now,  this  particular  piece  always  ex- 
asperates me.  If  there  is  much  that  is  mechan- 
ical and  conventional  in  the  Thalberg  fantasies, 
at  least  they  are  frankly  sensational  and  ad- 
mittedly for  display.  But  the  Liszt  Ballade  is  so 
empty,  so  pretentious,  so  affected!  One  expects 
that  something  is  about  to  occur,  but  it  never 
comes.  There  are  the  usual  chromatic  modula- 
tions leading  nowhere  and  the  usual  portentous 
roll  in  the  bass.  The  composition  works  up  to 
as  much  silly  display  as  ever  indulged  in  by 
Thalberg.  My  pianist  splashed  and  spluttered, 
132 


TONE  VERSUS  NOISE 

played  chord-work  straight  from  the  shoulder, 
and  when  he  had  finished  he  cried  out,  "There 
is  a  dramatic  close  for  you!" 

"I  call  it  mere  brutal  noise,"  I  repUed,  and  he 
winked  at  his  friend,  who  went  to  the  piano  with- 
out my  invitation.  Now,  I  did  not  care  for  the 
looks  of  this  one,  and  I  wondered  if  he,  too,  would 
display  his  biceps  and  his  triceps  with  such  force. 
But  he  was  a  different  brand  of  the  modern  breed. 
He  played  with  a  small,  gritty  tone,  and  at  a 
terrible  speed,  a  foolish  and  fantastic  derange- 
ment of  Chopin's  D-flat  Valse.  This  he  followed, 
at  a  break-neck  tempo,  with  Brahms'  dislocation 
of  Weber's  C  major  Rondo,  sometimes  called 
*'the  perpetual  movement."  It  was  all  very 
wonderful,  but  was  it  music? 

"Gentlemen,"  I  said,  as  I  arose,  pipe  in  hand, 
"you  have  both  studied,  and  studied  hard,"  and 
they  settled  themselves  in  their  bamboo  chairs 
with  a  look  of  resignation;  "but  have  you  studied 
well?  I  think  not.  I  notice  that  you  lay  the 
weight  of  your  work  on  the  side  of  technics. 
Speed  and  a  brutal  guasz-orchestral  tone  seem  to 
be  your  goal.  Where  is  the  music?  Where 
has  the  airy,  graceful  valse  of  Chopin  vanished? 
Encased,  as  you  gave  it,  within  hard,  unyielding 
walls  of  double  thirds,  it  lost  all  its  spirit,  all  its 
evanescent  hues.  It  is  a  butterfly  caged.  And 
133 


OLD  FOGY 

do  you  call  that  music,  that  topsy-turvymg  of  the 
Weber  Rondo?  Why,  it  sounds  like  a  clock 
that  strikes  thirteen  in  the  small  hours  of  the 
night!  And  you,  sir,  with  your  thunderous  and 
grandiloquent  Liszt  Ballade,  do  you  call  that 
pianoforte  music,  that  constant  striving  for  an 
aping  of  orchestral  effects?  Out  upon  it!  It 
is  hollow  music — music  without  a  soul.  It  is 
easier,  much  easier,  to  play  than  a  Mozart 
sonata,  despite  all  its  tumbling  about,  despite 
all  its  notes.  You  require  no  touch-discrimina- 
tion for  such  a  piece.  You  have  none.  In 
your  anxiety  to  compass  a  big  tone  you  relinquish 
all  attempts  at  finer  shadings — at  the  nuance, 
in  a  word.  Burly,  brutal,  and  overloaded  in 
your  style,  you  make  my  poor  grand  groan  with- 
out getting  one  vigorous,  vital  tone.  Why? 
Because  elasticity  is  absent,  and  will  always  be 
absent,  where  the  fingers  are  not  allowed  to  make 
the  music.  The  springiest  wrist,  the  most  supple 
forearm,  the  lightest  upper  arm  cannot  com- 
pensate for  the  absence  of  an  elastic  finger-stroke. 
It  is  what  lightens  up  and  gives  variety  of  color  to 
a  performance.  You  are  all  after  tone-quantity  and 
neglect  touch — touch,  the  revelation  of  the  soul." 
"Yes,  but  your  grand  is  worn  out  and  won't 
stand  any  forcing  of  the  tone,"  answered  the 
Liszt  Ballade,  rather  impudently. 
134 


TONE  VERSUS  NOISE 

"Why  the  dickens  do  you  want  to  force  the 
tone?"  said  I,  in  tart  accents.  "It  is  just  there 
we  disagree,"  I  yelled,  for  I  was  getting  mad. 
"In  your  mad  quest  of  tone  you  destroy  the  most 
characteristic  quality  of  the  pianoforte — I  mean 
its  lack  of  tone.  If  it  could  sustain  tone,  it  would 
no  longer  be  a  pianoforte.  It  might  be  an  organ 
or  an  orchestra,  but  not  a  pianoforte.  I  am 
after  tone-quality,  not  tonal  duration.  I  want  a 
pure,  bright,  elastic,  spiritual  touch,  and  I  let  the 
tonal  mass  take  care  of  itself.  In  an  orchestra  a 
full  chord  fortissimo  is  interesting  because  it  may 
be  scored  in  the  most  prismatic  manner.  But  hit 
out  on  the  keyboard  a  smashing  chord  and,  pray, 
where  is  the  variety  in  color?  With  a  good  ear 
you  recognize  the  intervals  of  pitch,  but  the 
color  is  the  same — hard,  cold,  and  monotonous, 
because  you  have  choked  the  tone  with  your 
idiotic,  hammer-like  attack.  Sonorous,  at  least, 
you  claim?  I  defy  you  to  prove  it.  Where  was 
the  sonority  in  the  metallic,  crushing  blows  you 
dealt  in  the  Liszt  Ballade?  There  was,  I  admit, 
great  clearness — a  clearness  that  became  a 
smudge  when  you  used  the  damper  pedal. 
No,  my  boys,  you  are  on  the  wrong  track  with 
your  orchestral-tone  theory.  You  transform  the 
instrument  into  something  that  is  neither  an 
orchestra  nor  a  pianoforte.    Stick  to  the  old  way; 

135 


OLD  FOGY 

it's  the  best.  Use  plenty  of  finger  pressure, 
elastic  pressure,  play  Bach,  throw  dumb  devices 
to  the  dogs,  and,  if  you  use  the  arm  pressure  at 
all,  confine  it  to  the  forearm.  That  will  more  than 
suffice  for  the  shallow  dip  of  the  keys.  You 
can't  get  over  the  fact  that  the  dip  is  shallow,  so 
why  attempt  the  impossible?  For  the  amount 
of  your  muscle  expenditure  you  would  need  a  key 
dip  of  about  six  inches.  Now,  watch  me.  I  shall, 
without  your  permission,  and  probably  to  your 
disgust,  play  a  nocturne  by  John  Field.  Per- 
haps you  never  heard  of  him?  He  was  an  Irish 
pianist  and,  like  most  Irishmen  of  brains,  gave 
the  world  ideas  that  were  promptly  claimed  by 
others.  But  this  time  it  was  not  an  EngUshman, 
but  a  Pole,  who  appropriated  an  Irishman's 
invention.  This  nocturne  is  called  a  forerunner 
to  the  Chopin  nocturnes.  They  are  really  imita- 
tions of  Field's,  without  the  blithe,  dewy  sweet- 
ness of  the  Irishman's.  First,  let  me  put  out  the 
lamps.  There  is  a  moon  that  is  suspended  like  a 
silver  bowl  over  the  Wissahickon.  It  is  the  hour 
for  magic  music." 

Intoxicated  by  the  sound  of  my  own  voice,  I 
began  playing  the  B-flat  Nocturne  of  Field.  I 
played  it  with  much  delicacy  and  a  delicious  touch. 
I  am  very  vain  of  my  touch.  The  moon  melted 
into  the  apartment  and  my  two  guests,  enthralled 
136 


TONE  VERSUS  NOISE 

by  the  mystery  of  the  night  and  my  music,  were 
still  as  mice.  I  was  enraptured  and  played  to  the 
end.  I  waited  for  the  inevitable  compliment. 
It  came  not.  Instead,  there  were  stealthy  snores. 
The  pair  had  slept  through  my  playing.  Im- 
beciles! I  awoke  them  and  soon  packed  them 
off  to  their  canvas  home  in  the  woods  hard  by. 
They'll  get  no  more  dinners  or  wisdom  from  me. 
I  tell  this  tale  to  show  the  hopelessness  of  argu- 
ing with  this  stiff-necked  generation  of  pianists. 
But  I  mean  to  keep  on  arguing  until  I  die  of  apo- 
plectic rage.  Good-evening! 
137 


XVI 
TCHAIKOVSKY 

A  DAY  in  musical  New  York! 
Not  a  bad  idea,  was  it?  I  hated  to  leave 
the  country,  with  its  rich  after-glow  of 
Summer,  its  color-haunted  dells,  and  its  pure, 
searching  October  air,  but  a  paragraph  in  a  New 
York  daily,  which  I  read  quite  by  accident,  de- 
cided me,  and  I  dug  out  some  good  clothes  from 
their  fastness  and  spent  an  hour  before  my 
mirror  debating  whether  I  should  wear  the  coat 
with  the  C-sharp  minor  colored  collar  or  the  one 
with  the  velvet  cuffs  in  the  sensuous  key  of  E-fiat 
minor.  Being  an  admirer  of  Kapellmeister 
Kreisler  (there's  a  writer  for  you,  that  crazy 
Hoffmann!),  I  selected  the  former.  I  went 
over  on  the  7.30  A.  M.,  P.  R.  R.,  and  reached 
New  York  in  exactly  two  hours.  There's  a 
tempo  for  you!  I  mooned  around  looking  for 
old  landmarks  that  had  vanished — twenty  years 
since  I  saw  Gotham,  and  then  Theodore  Thomas 
was  king. 

I  felt  quite  miserable  and  solitary,  and,  being 

hungry,  went  to  a  much-talked-of  caf^,  Liichow's 

by  name,   on  East  Fourteenth   Street.    I  saw 

Steinway  and  Sons  across  the  street  and  re- 

138 


TCHAIKOVSKY 

fleeted  with  sadness  that  the  glorious  days  of 
Anton  Rubinstein  were  over,  and  I  still  a  useless 
encumberer  of  the  earth.  Then  an  arm  was 
familiarly  passed  through  mine  and  I  was  saluted 
by  name. 

"You!  why  I  thought  you  had  passed  away  to 
the  majority  where  Dussek  reigns  in  ivory  splen- 
dor." 

I  turned  and  discovered  my  young  friend — I 
knew  his  grandfather  years  ago — Sledge,  a 
pianist,  a  bad  pianist,  and  an  alleged  critic  of 
music.  He  calls  himself  **a  music  critic." 
Pshaw!  I  was  not  wonderfully  warm  in  my 
greeting,  and  the  lad  noticed  it. 

"Never  mind  my  fun,  Mr.  Fogy.  Grandpa 
and  you  playing  Moscheles'  Hommage  d  Fromage^ 
or  something  like  that,  is  my  earliest  and  most 
revered  memory.  How  are  you?  What  can 
I  do  for  you?  Over  for  a  day's  music?  Well, 
I  represent  the  Weekly  Whiplash  and  can  get 
you  tickets  for  anything  from  hell  to  Hoboken." 

Now,  if  there  is  anything  I  dislike,  it  is  flip- 
pancy or  profanity,  and  this  young  man  had  both 
to  a  major  degree.  Besides,  I  loathe  the  modem 
musical  journalist,  flying  his  flag  one  week  for 
one  piano  house  and  scarifying  it  the  next  in 
choice  Billingsgate. 

"Oh,  come  into  Luchow's  and  eat  some  beer,'» 

139 


OLD  FOGY 

impatiently  interrupted  my  companion,  and,  like 
the  good-natured  old  man  that  I  am,  I  was  led 
like  a  lamb  to  the  slaughter.  And  how  I  regretted 
it  afterward!  I  am  cynical  enough,  forsooth,  but 
what  I  heard  that  afternoon  surpassed  my  com- 
prehension. I  knew  that  artistic  matters  were  at 
a  low  ebb  in  New  York,  yet  I  never  realized  the 
lowness  thereof  until  then.  I  was  introduced  to  a 
half-dozen  smartly  dressed  men,  some  beardless, 
some  middle-aged,  and  all  dissipated  looking. 
They  regarded  me  with  curiosity,  and  I  could 
hear  them  whispering  about  my  clothes.  I  got 
off  a  few  feeble  jokes  on  the  subject,  pointing  to 
my  C-sharp  minor  colored  collar.  A  yawn 
traversed  the  table. 

"Ah,  who  has  the  courage  to  read  Hoffmann, 
nowadays?"  asked  a  boyish-looking  rake.  I 
confessed  that  I  had.  He  eyed  me  with  an 
amused  smile  that  caused  me  to  fire  up.  I  opened 
on  him.  He  ordered  a  round  of  drinks.  I  told 
him  that  the  curse  of  the  generation  was  its  cold- 
blooded indifference,  its  lack  of  artistic  con- 
science. The  latter  word  caused  a  sleepy,  fat 
man  with  spectacles  to  wake  up. 

"Conscience,  who  said  conscience?    Is  there 
such  a  thing  in  art  any  more?"     I  was  delighted 
for  the  backing  of  a  stranger,  but  he  calmly  ig- 
nored me  and  continued: 
140 


TCHAIKOVSKY 

"Newspapers  rule  the  musical  world,  and  woe 
betide  the  artist  who  does  not  submit  to  his 
masters.  Conscience,  pooh-pooh!  Boodle,  lots 
of  it,  makes  most  artistic  reputations.  A  pianist 
is  boomed  a  year  ahead,  like  Paderewski,  for 
instance.  Paragraphs  subtly  hinting  of  his 
enormous  success,  or  his  enormous  hair,  or  his 
enormous  fingers,  or  his  enormous  technic " 

"Give  us  a  fermaia  on  your  enormous  story, 
Jenkins.  Every  one  knows  you  are  disgruntled 
because  the  Whiplash  attacks  your  judgment." 
This  from  another  journalist. 

Jenkins  looked  sourly  at  my  friend  Sledge,  but 
that  shy  young  person  behaved  most  noncha- 
lantly. He  whistled  and  offered  Jenkins  a  cigar. 
It  was  accepted.  I  was  disgusted,  and  then  they 
all  fell  to  quarreling  over  Tchaikovsky.  I  Us- 
tened  with  amazement. 

/  'Tchaikovsky,"  I  heard,  ''Tchaikovsky  is  the 
last  word  in  music.  His  S3miphonies,  his 
symphonic  poems,  are  a  superb  condensation  of 
all  that  Beethoven  knew  and  Wagner  felt.  He 
has  ten  times  more  technic  for  the  orchestra 
than  Berlioz  or  Wagner,  and  it  is  a  pity  he  was 
a  suicide — "  "How,"  I  cried,  "Tchaikovsky  a 
sucide?"    They  didn't  even  answer  me. 

"He  might  have  outlived  the  last  movement  of 
that  B-minor  symphony,  the  suicide  symphony, 
141 


OLD  FOGY 

and  if  he  had  we  would  have  had  another  ninth 
S3rmphony."  I  arose  indignant  at  such  blas- 
phemy, but  was  pushed  back  in  my  seat  by 
Sledge.  ''What  a  pity  Beethoven  did  not  live 
to  hear  a  man  who  carried  to  its  utmost  the  ex- 
pression of  the  emotions!"  I  now  snorted  with 
rage,  Sledge  could  no  longer  control  me. 

"Yes,  gentlemen,"  I  shouted;  "utmost  ex- 
pression of  the  emotions,  but  what  sort  of  emo- 
tions? What  sort,  I  repeat,  of  shameful,  morbid 
emotions?"  The  table  was  quiet  again;  a  single 
word  had  caught  it.  "Oh,  Mr.  Fogy,  you  are 
not  so  very  Wissahickon  after  all,  are  you? 
You  know  the  inside  story,  then?"  cried  Sledge. 
But  I  would  not  be  interrupted.    I  stormed  on. 

"I  know  nothing  about  any  story  and  don't 
care  to  know  it.  I  come  of  a  generation  of 
musicians  that  concerned  itself  Uttle  with  the 
scandals  and  private  life  of  composers,  but  lots 
with  their  music  and  its  meanings."  "Go  it. 
Fogy,"  called  out  Sledge,  hammering  the  table 
with  his  seidl.  "I  believe  that  some  composers 
should  be  put  in  jail  for  the  villainies  they 
smuggle  into  their  score.  This  Tchaikovsky  of 
yours — this  Russian — was  a  wretch.  He  turned 
the  prettiness  and  favor  and  noble  tragedy  of 
Shakespeare's  Romeo  and  Juliet  into  a  bawd's 
tale;  a  tale  of  brutal,  vile  lust;  for  such  passion 
142 


TCHAIKOVSKY 

as  he  depicts  is  not  love.  He  took  Hamlet  and 
transformed  him  from  a  melancholy,  a  philoso- 
phizing Dane  into  a  yelling  man,  a  man  of  the 
steppes,  soaked  with  vodka  and  red-handed  with 
butchery.  Hamlet,  forsooth!  Those  twelve 
strokes  of  the  bell  are  the  veriest  melodrama. 
And  Francesca  da  Rimini — who  has  not  read  of 
the  gentle,  lovelorn  pair  in  Dante's  priceless 
poem;  and  how  they  read  no  more  from  the 
pages  of  their  book,  their  very  glances  glued 
with  love?  What  doth  your  Tchaikovsky  with 
this  Old  World  tale?  Alas!  you  know  full  well. 
He  tears  it  limb  from  limb.  He  makes  over  the 
lovers  into  two  monstrous  Cossacks,  who  gibber 
and  squeak  at  each  other  while  reading  some 
obscene  volume.  Why,  they  are  too  much  inter- 
ested in  the  pictures  to  think  of  love.  Then 
their  dead  carcasses  are  whirled  aloft  on  scream- 
ing flames  of  hell,  and  sent  whizzing  into  a  spiral 
eternity." 

"Bravo!  bravo!  great!  I  tell  you  he's  great, 
your  friend.  Keep  it  up  old  man.  Your  de- 
scription beats  Dante  and  Tchaikovsky  com- 
bined!" I  was  not  to  be  lured  from  my  theme, 
and,  stopping  only  to  take  breath  and  a  fresh 
dip  of  my  beak  into  the  Pilsner,  I  went  on: 

"His  Manfred  is  a  libel  on  Byron,  who  was  a 
libel  on  God."  "Byron,  too,"  miu-mured  Jen- 
143 


OLD  FOGY 

kins.  "Yes,  Byron,  another  blasphemer.  The 
six  sjrmphonies  are  caricatures  of  the  symphonic 
form.  Their  themes  are,  for  the  most  part,  un- 
fitted for  treatment,  and  in  each  and  every  one 
the  boor  and  the  devil  break  out  and  dance  with 
uncouth,  lascivious  gestures.  This  musical 
drunkenness;  this  eternal  license;  this  want  of 
repose,  refinement,  musical  feeling — all  these  we 
are  to  believe  make  great  music.  I'll  not  admit 
it,  gentlemen;  I'll  not  admit  it!  The  piano  con- 
certo— I  onl3'^  know  one — with  its  fragmentary 
tunes;  its  dislocated,  jaw-breaking  rhythms,  is 
ugly  music;  plain,  ugly  music.  It  is  as  if  the 
composer  were  endeavoring  to  set  to  melody  the 
consonants  of  his  name.  There's  a  name  for 
you,  Tchaikovsky!  'Shriekhoarsely'  is  more 
like  it."  There  was  more  banging  of  steins,  and 
I  really  thought  Jenkins  would  go  off  in  an  apo- 
plectic fit,  he  was  laughing  so. 

**The  songs  are  barbarous,  the  piano-solo 
pieces  a  muddle  of  confused  difficulties  and  child- 
ish melodies.  You  call  it  naivete.  I  call  it 
puerility.  I  never  saw  a  man  that  was  less 
capable  of  developing  a  theme  than  Tchaikovsky. 
Compare  him  to  Rubinstein  and  you  insult  that 
great  master.  Yet  Rubinstein  is  neglected  for 
the  new  man  simply  because,  with  your  de- 
praved taste,  you  must  have  lots  of  red  pepper, 
144 


TCHAIKOVSKY 

high  spices,  mm,  and  an  orchestral  color  that 
fairly  blisters  the  eye.  You  call  it  color.  I  call 
it  chromatic  madness.  Just  watch  this  agile 
fellow.  He  lays  hold  on  a  subject,  some  Rus- 
sian volks  melody.  He  gums  it  and  bolts  it 
before  it  is  half  chewed.  He  has  not  the  logical 
charm  of  Beethoven — ah,  what  Jovian  repose; 
what  keen  analysis!  He  has  not  the  logic,  minus 
the  charm,  of  Brahms;  he  never  smells  of  the 
pure,  open  air,  like  Dvorak — a  milkman's  com- 
poser; nor  is  Tchaikovsky  master  of  the  pictorial 
counterpoint  of  Wagner.  All  is  froth  and  fury, 
oaths,  grimaces,  yelling,  hallooing  like  drunken 
Kalmucks,  and  when  he  writes  a  slow  movement 
it  is  with  a  pen  dipped  in  molasses.  I  don't 
wish  to  be  unjust  to  your  'modern  music  lord,* 
as  some  affected  idiot  calls  him,  but  really,  to 
make  a  god  of  a  man  who  has  not  mastered  his 
material  and  has  nothing  to  ofifer  his  hearers  but 
blasphemy,  vulgarity,  brutaUty,  evil  passions  like 
hatred,  concupiscence,  horrid  pride  —  indeed, 
all  the  seven  deadly  sins  are  mirrored  in  his 
scores — is  too  much  for  my  nerves.  Is  this  your 
god  of  modern  music?  If  so,  give  me  Wagner  in 
preference.  Wagner,  thank  the  fates,  is  no 
hypocrite.  He  says  out  what  he  means,  and  he 
usually  means  something  nasty.  Tchaikovsky, 
on  the  contrary,  taking  advantage  of  the  pecuUar 

145 


OLD  FOGY 

medium  in  which  he  works,  tells  the  most  awful, 
the  most  sickening,  the  most  immoral  stories; 
and  if  he  had  printed  them  in  type  he  would  have 

been  knouted  and  exiled  to  Siberia.    If " 

'Time  to  close  up,"  said  the  waiter.    I  was 
alone.    The    others    had    fled.    I    had    been 
mumbling   with   closed   eyes   for   hours.    Wait 
until  I  catch  that  Sledge! 
146 


XVII 
MUSICAL  BIOGRAPHY  MADE  TO  ORDER 

NO  longer  from  Dussek-Villa-on-Wissahick- 
on  do  I  indite  my  profound  thoughts  (it  is 
the  fashion  nowadays  in  Germany  for  a 
writer  to  proclaim  himself  or  herself — there  are  a 
great  many  "hers" — profound;  the  result,  I  sup- 
pose, of  too  much  Nietzsche  and  too  little  common 
sense,  not  to  mention  modesty — that  quite  anti- 
quated virtue).  I  am  now  situated  in  this  lovely, 
umbrageous  spot  not  far  from  the  Bohemian  bor- 
der in  Germany,  on  the  banks  of  the  romantic  river 
Pilsen.  To  be  sure,  there  are  no  catfish  and 
waffles  a  la  Schuylkill,  but  are  there  any  to  be 
found  today  at  Wissahickon?  On  the  other 
hand,  there  is  good  cooking,  excellent  beer  and 
in  all  Schaumpfeffer,  a  town  of  nearly  3000  souls, 
you  won't  find  a  man  or  woman  who  has  heard  of 
any  composer  later  than  Haydn.  They  still 
dance  to  the  music  of  Lanner  and  the  elder 
Strauss;  Johann,  Jr.,  is  considered  rather  an 
iconoclast  in  his  Fledermaus.  I  carefully  con- 
ceal the  American  papers,  which  are  smuggled 
out  to  my  villa — Villa  Scherzo  it  is  called  because 
life  is  such  a  joke,  especially  music — and  I  read 
147 


OLD  FOGY 

them  and  all  modern  books  (that  is,  those  dating 
later  than  1850)  behind  closed  doors.  Oh,  I  am 
so  cheerful  over  this  heavenly  relief  from  thrice- 
accursed  "modernity."  I'm  old,  I  admit  (I 
still  recall  Kalkbrenner's  pearly  touch  and  Doeh- 
ier's  chalky  tone),  but  my  hat  is  still  on  the 
piano  top.  In  a  word,  I'm  in  the  ring  and  don't 
propose  to  stop  writing  till  I  die,  and  I  shan't 
die  as  long  as  I  can  hold  a  pen  and  protest  against 
the  tendencies  of  the  times.  Old  Fogy  to  the 
end! 

I  walk,  I  talk,  I  play  Hummel,  Bach,  Mozart, 
and  occasionally  Stephen  Heller — he's  a  good 
substitute  for  the  sicMy,  affected  Chopin.  I 
read,  read  too  much.  Lately,  I've  been  browsing 
in  my  musical  library,  a  large  one  as  you  well 
know,  for  I  have  been  adding  to  it  for  the  last 
two  decades  and  more  by  receiving  the  newest 
contributions  to  what  is  called  ''musical  litera- 
ture." Well,  I  don't  mind  telling  you  that  the 
majority  of  books  on  music  bore  me  to  death. 
Particularly  books  containing  apochr3rphal  stories 
of  the  lives  of  great  composers  or  executive 
musicians.  Pshaw!  Why  I  can  reel  off  yams 
by  the  dozen  if  I'm  put  to  it.  Besides,  the 
more  one  reads  of  the  private  lives  of  great 
musicians,  the  more  one's  ideal  of  the  fitness 
of  things  is  shocked.  Paderewski  putting  a 
148 


MUSICAL  BIOGRAPHY  MADE  TO  ORDER 

collar  button  in  his  shirt  and  swearing  at  his 
private  chaplain  because  some  of  the  criticisms 
were  underdone,  is  not  half  so  fearsome  as 
Chopin  with  the  boils,  or  Franz  Schubert  adver- 
tising in  a  musical  journal.  After  years  of  read- 
ing I  have  reached  the  conclusion  that  the  average 
musical  Boswell  is  a  fraud,  a  snare,  a  pitfall,  and  a 
delusion.  The  way  to  go  about  being  one  is 
simple.  First  acquaint  yourself  with  a  few  facts 
in  the  lives  of  great  musicians,  then,  on  a  slim 
framework,  plaster  with  fiction  till  the  structure 
fairly  trembles.  Never  fear.  The  publishers 
will  print  it,  the  public  will  devour  it,  especially 
if  it  be  anecdotage.  Let  me  reveal  the  working 
of  the  musical  fiction  mill.  Here,  for  example, 
is  something  in  the  historical  vein.  Of  necessity 
it  must  be  pointless  and  colorless;  that  lends  the 
touch  of  reaUty.  Let  us  call  it — "Bach  and  the 
Boehm  Flute." 

Once  upon  a  time  it  is  related  that  the  great 
Johann  Sebastian  Bach  visited  Frederick  the 
Great  at  Potsdam.  Stained  with  travel  the 
wonderful  fugue-founder  was  ushered  into  the 
presence  of  Voltaire.  ''Gentlemen,"  cried  that 
monarch  to  his  courtiers,  "Old  Bach  has  arrived; 
let  us  see  what  this  jay  looks  like."  Frederick 
was  always  fond  of  a  joke  at  the  expense  of  the 
Boetians.  Attired  as  he  was,  Bach  was  ushered 
149 


OLD  FOGY 

into  the  presence  of  his  majesty.  In  his  hand  he 
held  a  small  box — or,  if  you  prefer  it  stated 
symbolically,  a  small  bachs.  "Ah!  Master 
Bach,"  said  the  Prussian  King,  condescendingly, 
"What  have  you  in  your  hand?"  "A  Boehm 
flute,  your  majesty,"  answered  Bach;  "for  it  I 
have  composed  a  concerto  in  seven  flats." 
"You  lie!"  retorted  the  bluff  monarch,  "the 
Boehm  flute  has  not  yet  been  invented.  Away 
with  you,  hayseed  from  Halle."  Whereat  the 
mighty  Bach  softly  laughed,  being  tickled  by  the 
regal  repartee,  and  stole  home,  and  there  he  sat 
him  down  and  composed  a  nine-part  fugue  for 
Boehm  flute  and  jackpot  on  the  word  Potsdam, 
the  manuscript  of  which  is  still  extant. 

How's  that?  Or,  suppose  Beethoven's  name 
be  mentioned.  Here  is  a  specimen  brick  from 
the  sort  of  material  Beethoven  anecdotes  are 
made.  Call  it,  for  the  sake  of  piquancy,  "Beet- 
hoven and  Esterhazy." 

"No,"  yelled  the  composer  of  the  Ninth 
Symphony^  throwing  a  bootjack  at  his  house- 
keeper— thus  far  the  eleventh,  I  mean  house- 
keeper and  not  bootjack — "No,  tell  the  thunder- 
ing idiot  I'm  drunk,  or  dead,  or  both."  Then, 
with  a  sigh,  he  took  up  a  quart  bottle  of  Schnapps 
and  poured  the  contents  over  his  hair,  and  with 
beating  heart  penned  his  immortal  Hymn  to  Joy, 
150 


MUSICAL  BIOGRAPHY  MADE  TO   ORDER 

Prince  Esterhazy,  his  patron,  greatly  incensed 
at  the  refusal  of  Beethoven  to  admit  him,  hastily 
chalked  on  his  door  a  small  offensive  musical 
theme,  which  the  great  composer  later  utilized 
in  the  allegro  of  his  Razzlewiski  quartet  (C  sharp 
minor).    From  such  small  beginnings,  etc. 

You  will  observe  how  I  work  in  Beethoven's 
frenetic  rage,  his  rudeness,  absent-mindedness, 
and  all  the  rest  of  the  things  we  are  taught  to 
believe  that  Beethoven  indulged  in.  Now  for 
something  more  modern  and  in  a  Ughter  vein. 
This  is  for  the  Brahms  lover.  Let  us  call  it 
"Brahms'  hatred  of  Cats." 

Brahms,  so  it  is  said,  was  an  avowed  enemy 
of  the  feline  tribe.  Unlike  Scarlatti,  who  was 
passionately  fond  of  chords  of  the  diminished 
cats,  the  phlegmatic  Johannes  spent  much  of  his 
time  at  his  window,  particularly  of  moonUt  nights, 
practising  counterpoint  on  the  race  of  cats,  the 
kind  that  infest  back  yards  of  dear  old  Vienna. 
Dr.  Antonin  Dvorak  had  made  his  beloved  friend 
and  master  a  present  of  a  peculiar  bow  and  arrov/, 
which  is  used  in  Bohemia  to  slay  sparrows.  In 
and  about  Prague  it  is  named  in  the  native 
tongue,  "Slugj  hjin  inye  nech."  With  this 
formidable  weapon  did  the  composer  of  orches- 
tral cathedrals  spend  his  leisure  moments. 
Little  wonder  that  Wagner  became  an  anti- 
151 


OLD  FOGY 

vivisectionist,  for  he,  too,  had  been  up  in  Brahms' 
backyard,  but  being  near-sighted,  usually  missed 
his  cat.  Because  of  arduous  practice  Brahms 
always  contrived  to  bring  down  his  prey,  and  then 
— O  diabolical  device! — after  spearing  the  poor 
brutes,  he  reeled  them  into  his  room  after  the 
manner  of  a  trout  fisher.  Then — so  Wagner 
averred — he  eagerly  listened  to  the  expiring  groans 
of  his  victims  and  carefully  jotted  down  in  his 
note-book  their  antemortem  remarks.  Wagner 
declared  that  he  worked  up  these  piteous  ut- 
terances into  his  chamber-music,  but  then 
Wagner  had  never  liked  Brahms.  Some  latter- 
day  Nottebohm  may  arise  and  exhibit  to  an 
outraged  generation  the  musical  sketch-books  of 
Brahms,  so  that  we  may  judge  of  the  truth  of  this 
tale. 

For  a  change,  drop  the  severe  objectivity  of 
the  method  historical  and  attempt  the  personal. 
It  is  very  fetching.  Here's  a  title  for  you; 
*'How  I  met  Richard  Wagner." 

The  day  was  of  the  soft  dreamy  May  sort. 
I  was  walking  slowly  across  the  Austemheim- 
hellmsberger  Platz — local  color,  you  observe! — 
when  my  eyes  suddenly  colUded  with  a  queer 
apparition.  At  first  blush  it  looked  like  a  Uttle 
old  woman,  in  visage  a  veritable  witch;  but 
horrors!  a  witch  with  whiskers.  This  old 
152 


MUSICAL  BIOGRAPHY  MADE  TO   ORDER 

woman,  as  I  mistook  her  to  be,  was  attired  in  an 
Empire  gown,  with  crinoline  under-attachments. 
Aroimd  the  neck  was  an  Elizabethan  rufif,  and  on 
the  head  was  a  bonnet  of  the  vogue  of  1840; 
huge,  monstrously  trimmed  and  bedecked  with  a 
perfect  garden  of  artificial  flowers.  The  color 
of  the  dress  was  salmon-blue,  with  pink  ribbons. 
Altogether  it  was  a  fearful  get-up,  and,  in- 
voluntarily, I  looked  about  me  expecting  to  see 
people  stopping,  a  crowd  forming.  But  no  one 
appeared  to  notice  the  little  old  woman  except 
myself,  and  as  she  drew  near  I  discovered  that 
she  wore  spectacles  and  a  fringe  of  iron-gray  hair 
aroimd  her  face.  Her  eyes  were  piercingly 
bright  and  on  her  lips  was  etched  a  sardonic 
smile.  Not  quite  knowing  how  to  explain  my 
rude  stare,  I  was  preparing  to  turn  in  another 
direction,  when  the  stranger  accosted  me,  and  in 
the  voice  of  a  man:  "Perhaps  you  don't  know 
that  I  am  Richard  Wagner,  the  composer  of  the 
Ring?  I  am  also  Liszt's  son-in-law,  and  from 
the  way  you  turn  your  feet  in,  I  take  you  to  be  a 
pianist  and  a  Leschetizky  pupil!"  Marvelous 
psychologist!  A  regular  Sherlock  Holmes.  And 
then,  with  a  snort  of  rage,  the  Master  walked 
away,  a  massive  Dachshimd  viciously  snapping 
at  a  link  of  sausage  that  idly  swung  from  his 
pocket. 

153 


OLD  FOGY 

There,  you  have  the  Wagner  anecdote  orches- 
trated to  suit  those  musical  persons  who  believe 
that  the  composer  was  fond  of  nothing  but 
millinery  and  dogs.  Finally,  if  your  pubUsher 
clamors  for  something  about  Liszt  or  Chopin, 
you  may  quote  this;  not  forgetting  the  allu- 
sion to  George  Sand.  To  mention  Chopin  with- 
out Sand  would  be  considered  excessively  in- 
accurate. I  call  the  story,  "Liszt's  Clever 
Retort." 

It  was  midwinter.  As  was  his  wont  in  this 
season,  Chopin  was  attired  from  head  to  foot 
in  white  wool.  His  fragile  form  and  spiritual 
face,  with  its  delicate  smile,  made  him  seem  a 
member  of  some  heavenly  brotherhood  that 
spends  its  existence  praying  for  the  expiation  of 
the  wickedness  wrought  by  men.  The  composer 
was  standing  near  the  fireplace;  without  it 
snowed,  desperately  snowed.  He  was  not  alone. 
Half  sitting,  half  reclining  on  a  chair,  his  feet 
on  the  mantelpiece,  was  a  man,  spare  and 
sinewy  as  an  Indian.  Long,  coarse,  brown  hair 
hung  mane-like  upon  his  shoulders.  His  lithe, 
powerful  fingers  almost  seemed  to  crush  the 
short  white  Irish  clay  pipe  from  which  he  occa- 
sionally took  a  whiff.  It  was  Liszt,  Franz  Liszt, 
Liszt  Ferencz — don't  forget  the  accompanying 
Eljen!— the  pet  of  the  gods,  the  adored  of 
154 


MUSICAL  BIOGRAPHY  MADE  TO   ORDER 

women;  Liszt  who  never  had  a  hair-cut;  Liszt 
the  inventor  of  the  Liszt  pupil.  There  had 
evidently  been  a  heated  discussion,  for  Chopin's 
face  was  adorned  with  bright  hectic  spots,  his 
smile  was  sardonic,  and  a  cough  shook  his  ascetic 
frame  as  if  from  suppressed  chagrin.  Liszt  was 
surly  and  at  intervals  said  "basta!"  beneath  his 
long  Milesian  upper  lip.  Such  silence  could  not 
long  endure;  an  explosion  was  imminent. 
Liszt,  quickly  divining  that  Chopin  was  about  to 
break  forth  in  an  hysterical  fury,  forstalled  him 
by  jocosely  crying:  "Freddy,  my  old  son,  the 
trouble  with  you  is  that  you  have  no  Sand  in 
you!"  And  before  the  enraged  Pole  could  an- 
swer this  cruel,  mocking  raillery,  the  tall  Magyar 
leaned  over,  pressed  the  button  three  times, 
and  the  lemonade  came  in  time  to  avert  blood- 
shed. 

There,  Mr.  Editor,  you  have  a  pleasing  com- 
minglement  of  romance  and  colloquialism.  Now 
that  I  have  shown  how  to  play  the  trick,  let  all 
who  will  go  ahead  and  be  their  own  musical 
Boswell. 

But  a  truce  to  such  foolery.  I  am  wa3rward 
and  gray  of  thought  today.  My  soul  is  filled 
with  the  clash  and  dust  of  life.  I  hate  the  eternal 
blazoning  of  fierce  woes  and  acid  joys  upon  the 
orchestral  canvas.  Why  must  the  music  of  a 
155 


OLD  FOGY 

composer  be  played?  Why  must  our  tone-weary 
world  be  sorely  grieved  by  the  subjective  shrieks 
and  imprudent  publications  of  some  musical 
fellow  wrestling  in  mortal  agony  with  his  first 
love,  his  first  tailor's  bill,  his  first  acquaintance 
with  the  life  about  him?  Why,  I  ask,  should 
music  leave  the  page  on  which  it  is  indited? 
Why  need  it  be  played?  How  many  beauties  in 
a  score  are  lost  by  translation  into  rude  tones! 
How  disenchanting  sound  those  climbing,  arbu- 
tus-like arpeggios  and  subtle  half-tints  of 
Chopin  when  played  on  that  brutal,  jangling  in- 
strument of  wood,  wire  and  iron,  the  pianoforte! 
I  shudder  at  the  profanation.  I  feel  an  oriental 
jealousy  concerning  all  those  beautiful  thoughts 
nestling  in  the  scores  of  Chopin  and  Schubert 
which  are  laid  bare  and  dissected  by  the  pompous 
pen  of  the  music-critic.  The  man  who  knows  it 
all.  The  man  who  seeks  to  transmute  the 
unutterable  and  ineffable  dehcacies  of  tone  into 
terms  of  commercial  prose.  And  newspaper 
prose.    Hideous  jargon,  I  abominate  you! 

I  am  suffering  from  too  many  harmonic  ha- 
rangues. [Isn't  this  one?]  I  long  for  the  valley 
of  silence,  Edgar  Poe's  valley,  wherein  not  even 
a  sigh  stirred  the  amber-colored  air  [or  wasn't 
it  saffron-hued?  I  forget,  and  Poe  is  not  to  be 
had  in  this  comer  of  the  universe].  Why  can't 
156 


MUSICAL  BIOGRAPHY  MADE  TO  ORDER 

music  be  read  in  the  seclusion  of  one's  study, 
in  the  company  of  one's  heart-beats?  Why 
must  we  go  to  the  housetop  and  shout  our  woes 
to  the  universe?  The  "barbaric  yawp"  of  Walt 
Whitman,  over  the  roofs  of  the  world,  has  become 
fashionable,  and  from  tooting  motor-cars  to 
noisy  symphonies  all  is  a  conspiracy  against 
silence.  At  night  dream-fugues  shatter  the 
walls  of  our  inner  consciousness,  and  yet  we  call 
music  a  divine  art!  I  love  the  written  notes,  the 
symbols  of  the  musical  idea.  Music,  like  some 
verse,  sounds  sweeter  on  paper,  sweeter  to  the 
inner  ear.  Music  overheard,  not  heard,  is  the 
more  beautiful.  Palimpsestlike  we  strive  to 
decipher  and  unweave  the  spiral  harmonies  of 
Chopin,  but  they  elude  as  does  the  sound  of  fall- 
ing waters  in  a  dream.  Those  violet  bubbles  of 
prismatic  light  that  the  Sarmatian  composer  blows 
for  us  are  too  fragile,  too  intangible,  too  spirit- 
haunted  to  be  played.  [All  this  sounds  as  if  I 
were  really  trying  to  write  after  the  manner  of 
the  busy  Princess  Sayn-Wittgenstein,  who 
helped  Liszt  to  manufacture  his  book  on  Chopin ; 
indeed,  it  is  suspected,  altered  every  line  he 
wrote  of  it.] 

O,  for  some  mighty  genius  of  color  who  will 
deluge  the  sky  with  p3rrotechnical  symphonies! 
Color  that  will  soothe  the  soul  with  iridescent  and 

157 


OLD  FOGY 

incandescent  harmonies,  that  the  harsh,  brittle 
noises  made  by  musical  instruments  will  no 
longer  startle  our  weaving  fancies.  Yet  if 
Shelley  had  not  sung  or  Chopin  chanted,  how 
much  poorer  would  be  the  world  today.  But 
that  is  no  reason  why  school  children  should 
scream  in  chorus:  "Life,  like  a  dome  of  many- 
colored  glass,  stains  the  white  radiance  of  eter- 
nity," or  that  tepid  misses  in  their  'teens  should 
murder  the  nocturnes  of  Chopin.  Even  the 
somnolent  gurgle  of  the  bullfrog,  around  the 
ponds  of  Manayunk,  as  he  signals  to  his  mate 
in  the  mud,  is  often  preferable  to  music  made  by 
earthly  hands.  Let  it  be  abolished.  Electro- 
cute the  composer  and  banish  the  music-critic. 
Then  let  there  be  elected  a  supervisory  board  of 
trusty  guardians,  men  absolutely  above  the 
reproach  of  having  played  the  concertina  or 
plunked  staccato  tunes  on  a  banjo.  Entrust  to 
their  care  all  beautiful  music  and  poetry  and  pro- 
hibit the  profane,  vulgar,  the  curious,  gaping 
herd  from  even  so  much  as  a  glance  at  these 
treasures.  For  the  few,  the  previous  elect,  the 
quintessential  in  art,  let  no  music  be  sounded 
throughout  the  land.  Let  us  read  it  and  think 
tender  and  warlike  silent  thoughts. 

And  now,  having  too  long  detained  you  with  my 
vagaries,  let  me  say  "good  night,"  for  it  is  getting 
158 


MUSICAL  BIOGRAPHY  MADE  TO  ORDER 

dark,  and  before  midnight  I  must  patrol  the 
keyboard  for  at  least  four  hours,  unthreading  the 
digital  intricacies  of  Kalkbrenner's  Variations 
on  the  old  melody,  Sei  ruhig  mein  Herz^  or  the 
Cat  will  hear  you. 

159 


xvm 

OLD  FOGY  WRITES  A  SYMPHONIC  POEM 

"  T~XEFINITE  feelings  and  emotions  are  unsus- 
1  J  ceptible  of  being  embodied  in  music," 
says  Eduard  Hanslick  in  his  Beautiful  in 
Music.  Now,  you  composers  who  make  sym- 
phonic poems,  why  don't  you  realize  that  on  its 
merits  as  a  musical  composition,  its  theme,  its 
form,  its  treatment,  that  your  work  will  endure, 
and  not  on  accoimt  of  its  fidelity  to  your  explana- 
tory program? 

For  example,  if  I  were  a  very  talented  young 
composer — which  I  am  not — and  had  mastered 
the  tools  of  my  trade — knew  everything  from  a 
song  to  a  sjmiphony,  and  my  instrumentation 
covered  the  whole  gamut  of  the  orchestral  pig- 
ment. .  .  .  Well,  one  night  as  I  tossed  wearily 
on  my  bed — it  was  a  fine  night  in  spring,  the 
moon  rounded  and  lustrous  and  silvering  the 
lake  below  my  window — suddenly  my  musical 
imagination  began  to  work. 

I  had  just  been  reading,  and  for  the  thousandth 
time.  Browning's  Child e  Roland,  with  its  sinister 
coloring  and  spiritual  suggestions.  Yet  it  had 
never  before  struck  me  as  a  subject  suitable  for 
musical  treatment.  But  the  exquisite  cool  of 
1 60 


OLD  FOGY  WRITES  A  SYMPHONIC  POEM 

the  night,  its  haunting  mellow  flavor,  had  set  my 
brain  in  a  ferment.  A  huge  fantastic  shadow 
threw  a  jagged  black  figure  on  the  lake.  Presto, 
it  was  done,  and  with  a  mental  snap  that  almost 
blinded  me. 

I  had  my  theme.  It  will  be  the  first  theme  in 
my  new  symphonic  poem,  Childe  Roland.  It 
will  be  in  the  key  of  B  minor,  which  is  to  be 
emblematic  of  the  dauntless  knight  who  to 
"the  dark  tower  came,"  unfettered  by  ob- 
stacles, physical  or  spiritual. 

O,  how  my  brain  seethed  and  boiled,  for  I  am 
one  of  those  unhappy  men  who  the  moment  they 
get  an  idea  must  work  it  out  to  its  bitter  end. 
Childe  Roland  kept  me  awake  all  night.  I  even 
heard  his  "dauntless  horn"  call  and  saw  the 
"squat  tower."  I  had  his  theme.  I  felt  it 
to  be  good;  to  me  it  was  Browning's  Knight 
personified.  I  could  hear  its  underlying  har- 
monies and  the  instrumentation,  sombre,  gloomy, 
without  one  note  of  gladness. 

The  theme  I  treated  in  such  a  rhjrthmical 
fashion  as  to  impart  to  it  exceeding  vitality,  and 
I  announced  it  with  the  English  horn,  with  a 
curious  rhjrthmic  backgroimd  by  the  tympani; 
the  strings  in  division  played  tremolando  and  the 
bass  staccato  and  muted.  This  may  not  be  clear 
to  you ;  it  is  not  very  clear  to  me,  but  at  the  time 
i6i 


OLD  FOGY 

it  all  seemed  very  wonderful.  I  finished  the 
work  after  nine  months  of  agony,  of  revision,  of 
pruning,  clipping,  cutting,  hawking  it  about  for 
my  friends'  inspection  and  getting  laughed  at, 
admired  and  also  mildly  criticized. 

The  thrice  fatal  day  arrived,  the  rehearsals  had 
been  torture,  and  one  night  the  audience  at  a 
great  concert  had  the  pleasure  of  reading  on  the 
program  Brov^rning's  Childe  Roland  in  full,  and 
wondering  what  it  was  all  about.  My  S3nn- 
phonic  poem  would  tell  them  aU,  as  I  firmly 
believed  in  the  power  of  music  to  portray  de- 
finitely certain  soul-states,  to  mirror  moods,  to 
depict,  rather  indefinitely  to  be  sure,  certain 
phenomena  of  daily  life. 

My  poem  was  well  played.  It  was  only  ninety 
minutes  long,  and  I  sat  in  a  nervous  swoon  as  I 
listened  to  the  Childe  Roland  theme,  the  squat 
tower  theme,  the  sudden  little  river  motif,  the 
queer  gaunt  horse  theme,  the  horrid  engine  of 
war  motif,  the  sinister,  grinning,  false  guide 
subject — in  short,  to  all  the  many  motives  of 
the  poem,  with  its  apotheosis,  the  dauntless  blast 
from  the  brave  knight  as  he  at  last  faced  the  dark 
tower. 

This  latter  I  gave  out  with  twelve  trombones, 
twenty-one  bassett  horns  and  one  calliope;  it 
almost  literally  brought  down  the  house,  and  I 
162 


OLD  FOGY  WRITES  A  SYMPHONIC  POEM 

was  the  happiest  man  alive.  As  I  moved  out  I 
was  met  by  the  critic  of  The  Disciples  of  Tone, 
who  said  to  me: 

"Lieber  Kerl,  I  must  congratulate  you;  it 
beats  Richard  Strauss  all  hollow.  Who  and 
what  was  Childe  Roland?  Was  he  any  relation 
to  Byron's  Childe  Harold?  I  suppose  the  first 
theme  represented  the  'galumphing'  of  his  horse, 
and  that  funny  triangular  fugue  meant  that  the 
horse  was  lame  in  one  leg  and  was  going  it  on 
three.    Adieu;  I'm  in  a  hurry." 

Triangular  fugue!  Why,  that  was  the  cross- 
roads before  which  Childe  Roland  hesitated! 
How  I  hated  the  man. 

I  was  indeed  disheartened.  Then  a  lady  spoke 
to  me,  a  musical  lady,  and  said : 

"It  was  grand,  perfectly  grand,  but  why  did 
you  introduce  a  funeral  march  in  the  middle — I 
fancied  that  Childe  Roland  was  not  killed  until 
the  end?" 

The  funeral  march  she  alluded  to  was  not  a 
march  at  all,  but  the  "quagmire  theme,"  from 
which  queer  faces  threateningly  mock  at  the 
knight. 

"Hopeless,"  thought  I;  "these  people  have  no 
imagination." 

The  next  day  the  critics  treated  me  roughly. 
I  was  accused  of  cribbing  my  first  theme  from 
163 


OLD  FOGY 

The  Flying  Dutchman^  and  fixing  it  up  rh3rth- 
mically  for  my  own  use,  as  if  I  hadn't  made  it  on 
the  spur  of  an  inspired  moment!  They  also  told 
me  that  I  couldn't  write  a  fugue ;  that  my  orches- 
tration was  overloaded,  and  my  work  deficient  in 
symmetry,  repose,  development  and,  above  all, 
in  coherence. 

This  last  was  too  much.  Why,  Browning's 
poem  was  contained  in  my  tone-poem;  blame 
Browning  for  the  incoherence,  for  I  but  followed 
his  verse.  One  day  many  months  afterward  I 
happened  to  pick  up  HansUck,  and  chanced  on 
the  following: 

"Let  them  play  the  theme  of  a  symphony  by 
Mozart  or  Haydn,  an  adagio  by  Beethoven,  a 
scherzo  by  Mendelssohn,  one  of  Schumann's 
or  Chopin's  compositions  for  the  piano,  or  again, 
the  most  popular  themes  from  the  overtures  of 
Auber,  Donizetti  or  Flotow,  who  would  be  bold 
enough  to  point  out  a  definite  feeling  on  the  sub- 
ject of  any  of  these  themes?  One  will  say  'love.' 
Perhaps  so.  Another  thinks  it  is  longing.  He 
may  be  right.  A  third  feels  it  to  be  religion. 
Who  may  contradict  him?  Now,  how  can  we 
talk  of  a  definite  feeling  represented  when 
nobody  really  knows  what  is  represented?  Prob- 
ably all  will  agree  about  the  beauty  or  beauties 
of  the  composition,  whereas  all  will  differ  regard- 
164 


OLD  FOGY  WRITES  A  SYMPHONIC  POEM 

ing  its  subject.  To  represent  something  is  to 
exhibit  it  clearly,  to  set  it  before  us  distinctly. 
But  how  can  we  call  that  the  subject  represented 
by  an  art  which  is  really  its  vaguest  and  most 
indej&nite  element,  and  which  must,  therefore, 
forever  remain  highly  debatable  ground." 

I  saw  instantly  that  I  had  been  on  a  false  track. 
Charles  Lamb  and  Eduard  Hanslick  had  both 
reached  the  same  conclusion  by  diverse  roads.  I 
was  disgusted  with  myself.  So  then  the  whisper- 
ing of  love  and  the  clamor  of  ardent  combatants 
were  only  whispering,  storming,  roaring,  but  not 
the  whispering  of  love  and  the  clamor;  musical 
clamor,  certainly,  but  not  that  of  ''ardent  com- 
batants." 

I  saw  then  that  my  symphonic  poem,  Childe 
Roland,  told  nothing  to  anyone  of  Browning's 
poem,  that  my  own  subjective  and  overstocked 
imaginings  were  not  worth  a  rush,  that  the  music 
had  an  objective  existence  as  music  and  not  as  a 
poetical  picture,  and  by  the  former  and  not  the 
latter  it  must  be  judged.  Then  I  discovered 
what  poor  stuff  I  had  produced — how  my  fancy 
had  tricked  me  into  believing  that  those  three  or 
four  bold  and  heavily  orchestrated  themes,  with 
their  restless  migration  into  different  tonalities, 
were  "soul  and  tales  marvelously  mirrored." 

In  reality  my  ignorance  and  lack  of  contra- 
165 


OLD  FOGY 

puntal  knowledge,  and,  above  all,  the  want  of 
clear  ideas  of  form,  made  me  label  the  work  a 
symphonic  poem — an  elastic,  high-sounding, 
pompous  and  empty  title.  In  a  spirit  of  revenge 
I  took  the  score,  rearranged  it  for  small  orchestra, 
and  it  is  being  played  at  the  big  circus  under  the 
euphonious  title  of  The  Patrol  of  the  Night  Stick, 
and  the  musical  press  praises  particularly  the 
graphic  power  of  the  night  stick  motive  and  the 
verisunilitude  of  the  escape  of  the  burglar  in  the 
coda. 

Alas,  Childe  Roland! 

Seriously,  if  our  rising  young  composers — 
isn't  it  funny  they  are  always  spoken  of  as  rising? 
I  suppose  it's  because  they  retire  so  late — read 
Hanslick  carefully,  much  good  would  accrue. 
It  is  all  well  enough  to  call  your  work  something 
or  other,  but  do  not  expect  me  nor  my  neighbor 
to  catch  your  idea.  We  may  be  both  thinking 
about  something  else,  according  to  our  tempera- 
ments. I  may  be  probably  enjoying  the  form, 
the  instrumentation,  the  development  of  your 
themes;  my  neighbor,  for  all  we  know,  will  in 
imagination  have  buried  his  rich,  irritable  old 
aimt,  and  so  your  paean  of  gladness,  with  its 
brazen  clamor  of  trumpets,  means  for  him  the 
triumphant  ride  home  from  the  cemetery  and  the 
anticipated  joys  of  the  post-mortuary  hurrah. 
i66 


XIX 
A    COLLEGE    FOR    CRITICS 

YES,  it  was  indeed  a  hot,  sultry  afternoon,  and 
as  the  class  settled  down  to  stolid  work, 
even  Mr.  Quelson  shifted  impatiently  at 
the  blackboard,  where  he  was  trying  to  explain 
to  a  young  pupil  from  Missouri  that  Beethoven 
did  not  write  his  oratorio.  The  Mount  of  Olives, 
for  Park  and  Tilford.  It  was  no  use,  however, 
the  pupil  had  been  brought  up  in  a  delicatessen 
foundry  and  saw  everything  musical  from  the 
comestible  viewpoint. 

The  Sim  blazed  through  the  open  oriel  windows 
at  the  western  end  of  the  large  hall,  and  the  class 
inwardly  rebelled  at  its  task  and  thought  of  cool, 
green  grottoes  with  heated  men  frantically  fall- 
ing over  the  home-plate,  while  the  multitude 
belched  bravos  as  Teddy  McCorkle  made  three 
bases.  Instead  of  the  national  game  the  class 
was  wrestling  with  figured  bass  and  the  art  of 
descant,  and  again  it  groaned  aloud. 

Mr.  Quelson  faced  his  pupils.  In  his  eyes 
were  tears,  but  he  must  do  his  duty. 

"Gentlemen,"  he  suavely  said,  "the  weather 
is  certainly  trying,  but  remember  this  is  ex- 
amination day,  and  next  week  you,  that  is  some 
167 


OLD  FOGY 

of  you,  will  go  out  into  the  great  world  to  face 
its  cares,  to  wrestle  for  its  prizes,  to  put  forth 
your  strength  against  the  strength  of  men;  in  a 
word,  to  become  critics  of  music,  and  to  repre- 
sent this  college,  wherein  you  have  imbibed  so 
much  generous  and  valuable  learning." 

He  paused,  and  the  class,  which  had  pricked 
up  its  ears  at  the  word  "imbibe,"  settled  once 
again  to  listen  in  gloomy  silence.  Their  digni- 
fied preceptor  continued. 

"And  now,  gentlemen  of  the  Brahms  Institute, 
I  hasten  to  inform  you  that  the  examining  com- 
mittee is  without,  and  is  presently  to  be  ad- 
mitted. Let  me  conjure  you  to  keep  your 
heads;  let  me  beg  of  you  to  do  yourself  justice. 
Surely,  after  five  years  of  constant,  sincere,  and 
earnest  study  you  will  not  backslide,  you  will 
not,  in  the  language  of  the  great  Matthewson, 
make  any  muffs."  Professor  Quelson  looked 
about  him  and  beamed  benignly.  He  had  made  a 
delicate  jokp,  and  it  was  not  lost,  for  most  sonor- 
ously the  class  chanted,  "He's  a  jolly  good 
fellow,"  and  in  modern  harmonies.  Their  pro- 
fessor looked  gratified  and  bowed.  Then  he 
tapped  a  bell,  which  sounded  the  triad  of  B  flat 
minor,  and  the  doors  at  the  eastern  end  of  the 
hall  parted  asunder,  and  the  examining  committee 
solemnly  entered. 

i68 


A  COLLEGE  FOR  CRITICS 

It  was  an  august  looking  gang.  Two  music- 
critics  from  four  of  the  largest  cities  of  the 
country  comprised  the  board  of  examination, 
with  a  president  selected  by  common  vote. 
This  president  was  the  distinguished  pianist  and 
literator,  Dr.  Larry  Nopkin,  and  his  sarcastic 
glare  at  the  pupils  gave  every  man  the  nervous 
shivers.  Funereally  the  nine  men  filed  by  and 
took  their  seats  on  the  platform,  Dr.  Nopkin 
occupying  with  Mr.  Quelson  the  dais,  on  which 
stood  a  grand  piano. 

There  was  a  brief  pause,  but  pregnant  with 
anxiety.  Mr.  Quelson,  all  smiles,  handed  Dr. 
Nopkin  a  long  list  of  names,  and  the  committee 
fanned  itself  and  thought  of  the  Tannhduser- 
Busch  Overture  which  it  had  listened  to  so  at- 
tentively in  the  Wagner  coaches  tliat  brought  it 
to  Brahms  Institute. 

The  only  man  of  the  party  who  seemed  out  of 
humor  was  Mr.  Blink,  who  grumbled  to  his 
neighbor  that  the  name  of  the  coUege  was  in 
bad  taste.  It  should  have  been  called  the 
Chopin  Retreat  or  the  Paderewski  Home,  but 
Brahms — pooh! 

Dr.  Nopkin  arose,  put  on  a  pair  of  ponderous 
spectacles,  and  grinned  malevolently  at  his 
hearers. 

;^  "Yoimg  men,"  he  squeakily  said,  **I  want  to 
169 


OLD  FOGY 

begin  with  a  story.  Once  upon  a  time  a  certain 
young  man,  full  of  the  conviction  that  he  was  a 
second  Liszt,  sought  out  Thalberg,  when  that 
great  pianist — " 

"Great  pianist!"  whispered  Blink,  sardonically. 

*'Yes,  I  said  great  pianist — greater  than  all 
your  Paderewski's,  your—" 

"I  protest,  Mr.  President,"  said  Mr.  Blink, 
rising  to  his  feet;  at  the  same  time  a  pink  flush 
rose  to  his  cheek.  "I  protest.  We  have  not 
come  here  to  compare  notes  about  pianists,  but 
to  examine  this  class." 

The  class  giggled,  but  respectfully  and  in  a  per- 
fect major-accord.  Dr.  Nopkin  grew  black  in 
the  face.    Turning  to  Mr.  Quelson  he  said: 

"Either  I  am  president  or  I  am  not,  Mr. 
Quelson." 

That  gentleman  looked  very  much  embar- 
rassed. 

*'0h,  of  course,  doctor,  of  course;  Mr.  Blink 
was  carried  away,  you  know — carried  away  by 
his  professional  enthusiasm — no  offense  in- 
tended, I  am  sure,  Mr.  Blink." 

By  this  time  Mr.  Blink  had  been  pulled  down 
in  his  seat  by  Mr.  Sanderson,  the  critic  of  the 
Skyrocket,  and  order  was  restored. 

The  class  seemed  disappointed  as  Dr.  Nopkin 
proceeded:  "As  I  was  saying  when  interrupted 
170 


A  COLLEGE  FOR  CRITICS 

by  my  Wagnerian  associate,  the  young  man  went 
to  Thalberg  and  played  an  original  composition 
called  the  Tornado  Galop.  It  was  written  ex- 
clusively for  the  black  keys,  and  a  magnificent 
glissando,  if  I  do  flatter  myself,  ended  the  piece 
most  brilliantly.  Thalberg — it  was  in  the  year 
'57,  if  I  remember  aright." 

"You  do,"  remarked  the  class  in  pleasing  tune. 

"Thank  you,  gentlemen,  I  see  dates  are  not 
your  weak  point.    Thalberg  remarked — " 

"For  goodness  sake  give  us  a  rest  on  Thal- 
berg!" said  the  irrepressible  Blink. 

"A  rest,  yes,  a  fermata  if  you  wish,"  retorted 
the  doctor,  and  the  witticism  was  received  with 
a  yell,  in  the  Doric  mode.  You  see  Rheinberger 
had  not  quite  sapped  the  sense  of  humor  of  Mr. 
Quelson's  young  acoljrtes. 

Considerably  pleased  with  himself  Dr.  Nopkin 
continued : 

"Thalberg  said  to  the  young  man,  'Honored 
sir,  there  is  too  much  wind  in  your  work,  give 
your  Tornado  more  earth  and  less  air.'  Now 
the  point  of  this  amiable  criticism  is  applicable 
to  your  work  now  and  in  the  future.  Give  your 
readers  little  wind,  but  much  soil.  Do  not  in- 
dulge in  fine  writing,  but  facts,  facts,  facts!" 
Here  the  speaker  paused  and  glanced  severely 
at  his  colleagues,  who  awoke  with  a  start.  The 
171 


OLD  FOGY 

ear  of  the  music  critic  is  very  keen  and  long 
practice  enables  him  to  awaken  at  the  precise 
moment  the  music  ceases. 

Then  Dr.  Nopkin  announced  that  the  examina- 
tions would  begin,  and  again  from  a  tapped  bell 
sounded  the  triad  of  B  fiat  minor.  The  class 
looked  unhappy,  and  the  young  fellow  from 
Missouri  burst  into  tears.  For  a  moment  a 
wave  of  hysterical  emotion  surged  through  the 
hall,  and  there  being  so  much  temperament 
present  it  seemed  as  if  a  crisis  was  at  hand. 
Mr.  Quelson  rose  to  the  occasion.  Crying 
aloud  in  a  massive  voice,  he  asked : 

''Gentlemen,  give  me  the  low  pitch  A!" 

Instantly  the  note  was  sounded;  even  the 
weeping  pupil  hummed  it  through  his  tears,  and 
a  panic  was  averted  by  the  coolness  of  a  massive 
brain  fertile  in  expedients. 

The  committee,  now  thoroughly  awake,  looked 
gratified,  and  the  examination  began. 

After  glancing  through  the  list,  Dr.  Nopkin 
called  aloud: 

"Mr.  Hogwin,  will  you  please  tell  me  the  date 
of  the  death  of  Verdi?" 

"Don't  let  him  jolly  you,  Hoggy,  old  boy," 

sang  the  class   in  an  immaculate  minor  key. 

The  doctor  was  aghast,  but  Mr.  Quelson  took 

the  part  of  his  school.    He  argued  that  the  ques- 

172 


A  COLLEGE  FOR  CRITICS 

tion  was  a  misleading  one.  They  wrangled 
passionately  over  this,  and  Blink  finally  declared 
that  if  Verdi  was  not  dead  he  ought  to  be.  This 
caused  a  small  riot,  which  was  appeased  by  the 
class  singing  the  Anvil  Chorus. 

**Well,  I  give  in,  Mr.  Quelson;  perhaps  my 
friend  Blink  would  like  to  put  a  few  questions." 
Dr.  Nopkin  fanned  himself  vigorously  with  an 
old  and  treasured  copy  of  Dwight's  Journal  of 
Music,  containing  a  criticism  of  his  ''passionate 
octave  playing."  Mr.  Blink  arose  and  took  the 
list. 

"I  see  here,"  he  said,  "the  name  of  Beck- 
messer  McGillicuddy.  The  name  is  a  promis- 
ing one.  Wagner  ever  desired  the  Celt  to  be 
represented  in  his  scheme  of  the  universe." 

"Obliging  of  him,"  insinuated  Mr.  Tile  of  the 
Daily  Bulge. 

"Gentlemen,  gentlemen,"  groaned  poor  Quel- 
son; "think  of  the  effect  on  the  class  if  this  spirit 
of  irreverent  repartee  is  maintained." 

"Mr.  Beckmesser  McGillicuddy,  will  you 
please  stand  up?"  requested  Mr.  Blink. 

"Stand  up,  Gilly!  Stand  up  Gilly,  and  show 
him  what  you  are.  Don't  be  afraid,  Gilly! 
"We  will  see  you  through,"  chanted  the  class 
with  an  amazing  volume  of  tone  and  in  lively 
rhythm. 

173 


OLD  FOGY 

The  young  man  arose.  He  was  6  feet  8,  with 
a  17  waist,  and  a  12^  neck.  Yet  he  looked 
intelligent.  The  class  watched  him  eagerly, 
and  the  Missouri  member,  now  thoroughly  re- 
covered, whistled  the  Fate-motif  from  Carmen, 
and  McGillicuddy  looked  grateful. 

"You  wish  to  become  a  music  critic,  do  you 
not?"  inquired  Mr.  Blink,  patronizingly. 

"What  do  you  think  I'm  here  for?"  asked 
the  student,  in  firm,  cool  tones. 

"Tell  me,  then,  did  Wagner  ever  wear  paper 
collars?" 

"Celluloid,"  was  the  quick  answer,  and  the 
class  cheered.  Mr.  Quelson  looked  unhappy, 
and  Tile  sneered  in  a  minor  but  audible  key. 

"Good,"  said  Mr.  BHnk.  "You'll  do.  Would 
any  of  my  colleagues  care  to  question  this  young 
and  promising  applicant,  who  appears  to  me  to 
have  thoroughly  mastered  modem  music?" 

Little  Mr.  Slehbell  arose,  and  the  class  again 
trembled.  They  had  read  his  How  to  See 
Music  Although  a  Deaf  Mute,  and  they  knew 
that  there  were  questions  in  it  that  could  knock 
them  out.  The  critic  secured  the  list,  and  after 
hunting  up  the  letter  K,  he  coughed  gently  and 
asked : 

"Mr.  Krap  is  here,  I  hope?" 

"Get   into   line,   Billy   Krap;   get   into   line, 

174 


A  COLLEGE  FOR  CRITICS 

Billy.  Give  him  as  good  as  he  gives  you;  so  fall 
into  line,  Billy  Krap." 

This  was  first  sung  by  the  class  with  anti- 
phonal  responses,  then  with  a  fugued  finale,  and 
Mr.  Slehbell  was  considerably  impressed. 

"I  must  say,"  he  began,  "even  if  you  do  not 
become  shining  lights  as  music  critics,  you  are 
certainly  qualified  to  become  members  of  an 
Opera  Company.  But  where  is  Mr.  Elrap — a 
Bohemian,  I  should  say,  from  his  name." 

"Isn't  Slehbell  marvellous  on  philology?" 
said  Sanderson,  and  Dr.  Nopkin  looked  shocked. 

No  Krap  stood  up,  so  the  name  of  Flatbush  was 
called.  He,  too,  was  absent,  and  Mr.  Quelson 
explained  in  exasperated  accents  that  these  two 
were  his  prize  pupils,  but  had  begged  o&  to 
umpire  a  game  of  Gregorian-chant  cricket  down 
in  the  village.  "Ask  for  Palestrina  McVickar," 
said  Mr.  Quelson,  in  an  eager  stage  whisper. 

The  new  man  proved  to  be  a  wild-looking  per- 
son, with  hair  on  his  shoulders,  and  it  was 
noticeable  that  the  class  gave  him  no  choral 
invitation  to  arise.  He  looked  formidable,  how- 
ever, and  you  could  have  heard  an  E  string  snap, 
so  intense  was  the  silence. 

"Mr.  McVickar,  you  are  an  American,  I  pre- 
sume?" 

"No,  sir;  I  am  an  Australian,  I  am  happy  to 

175 


OLD  FOGY 

say."  A  slight  groan  was  heard  from  the  lips  of 
an  austere  youth  with  a  Jim  Corbett  pompadour. 

"You  may  groan  all  you  lilje,"  said  McVickar, 
fiercely;  "but  Fitzsimmons  licked  him  and  that 
blow  in  the  solar  plexus — " 

Mr.  Slehbell  raised  his  hands  deprecatingly. 

"Really,  young  gentlemen,  you  seem  very  well 
posted  on  sporting  matters.  What  I  wish  to  ask 
you  is  whether  you  think  Dvorak's  later,  or  Ameri- 
can manner,  may  be  compared  to  Brahms' 
second  or  D  minor  piano  concerto  period?" 

"He  doesn't  know  Brahms  from  a  bull's  foot," 
roared  the  class,  in  unison.  "Ask  him  who 
struck  Billy  Patterson?"  Once  more  the  quick 
eye  of  Mr.  Quelson  saw  an  impending  rebellion, 
and  quickly  rushing  among  the  malcontents  he 
bundled  five  of  them  out  of  the  room  and  returned 
to  the  platform,  murmuring: 

"Such  musical  temperaments,  you  know;  such 
very  great  temperaments!"  Incidentally,  he  had 
rid  himself  of  five  of  the  most  ignorant  men  of  the 
class.     Quelson  was  really  very  diplomatic. 

McVickar  hesitated  a  moment  after  silence  had 
been  restored,  and  then  answered  Mr.  Slehbell's 
question : 

"You  see,  sir,  we  are  no  further  than  Leybach 
and  Auber.  The  name  you  mention  is  not 
familiar  to  me,  but  I  can  tell  you  all  the  different 
176 


A  COLLEGE  FOR  CRITICS 

works  of  Carl  Czemy;  and  I  know  how  to  spell 
Mascagni." 

''Heavens,"  screamed  Blink,  and  he  fainted 
from  fright.  Beer  was  ordered,  and  after  a  short 
piano  solo— Czemy's  Toccata  in  C,  from  Dr. 
Larry  Nopkin — order  reigned  once  more.  The 
class  gazed  enviously  at  the  committee  as  it 
sipped  beer,  and  longed  for  the  day  when  it  would 
be  free  and  critics  of  music.  Then  Mr.  Quelson 
said  that  questioning  was  at  an  end.  He  had 
never  endeavored  to  inculcate  knowledge  of  a 
positive  sort  in  his  pupils.  Besides,  what  did 
music  critics  want  with  knowledge?  They  had 
Grove's  Dictionary  as  a  starter,  and  by  care- 
fully negativing  every  date  and  fact  printed  in 
it,  they  were  sure  to  hit  the  truth  somewhere. 
A  ready  pen  was  the  thing,  and  he  begged  the 
committee  to  be  allowed  to  present  specimens 
of  criticisms  of  imaginary  concerts,  written  by  the 
graduating  class  of  1912. 

The  request  was  granted,  and  Dr.  Nopkin 
selected  as  the  reader.  There  was  an  interval 
of  ten  minutes,  during  which  the  doctor  played 
snatches  of  De  Kcven  and  Scharwenka,  and  the 
class  drove  its  pen  furiously.  Finally,  the  bell 
sounded,  and  the  following  criticisms  were 
handed  to  the  president,  and  read  aloud  while 
tlie  class  blushed  in  ruddy  ensemble: 
177 


OLD  FOGY 

An    Interesting   Evening 

**It  was  a  startling  sight  that  met  the  eyes  of 
the  musical  editor  of  the  Evening  Buzzard  when 
he  entered  the  De  Pew  Opera  House  last  night 
at  8.22.  All  the  leading  families  of  Mushmelon, 
arrayed  in  their  best  raiment,  disported  them- 
selves in  glittering  groups,  and  it  was  almost 
with  a  feeling  of  disappointment  that  we  saw  the 
curtain  arise  on  the  seventh  act  of  Faust.  Of 
course  the  music  and  singing  were  applauded  to 
the  echo,  and  the  principals  were  forced  to  bow 
their  acknowledgments  to  the  gracious  applause 
of  the  upper  ten  of  Mushmelon.  The  following 
is  a  list  of  those  present,"  etc.  (Here  follow 
names.) 

"A  rattling  good  notice  that,"  said  one  of  the 
older  members  of  the  committee.  Mr.  Quelson 
hastened  to  explain  that  it  was  intended  for  an 
emergency  notice,  when  the  night  city  editor 
was  unmusical.  "But,"  he  added,  "here  is 
something  in  a  more  superior  vein." 

Dr.  Nopkin  read: 

How   I   Heard   Paderewski! 

"Of  course  I  heard  Paderewski.    Let  me  tell 
you  all  about  it.    I  had  quarreled  with  my  dear 
one  early  in  the  day  over  a  pneumatic  tire,  so  I 
278 


A  COLLEGE  FOR  CRITICS 

determined  to  forget  it  and  go  listen  to  some 
music. 

"Music  always  soothes  my  nerves. 

"Does  it  soothe  yours,  gentle  reader? 

"I  went  to  hear  Paderewski. 

"Taking  the  Broadway  car,  me  and  my  liver — 
my  liver  is  my  worst  enemy;  terrible  things, 
livers;  is  life  really  worth  the  liver?^!  sat  down 
and  paid  my  fare  to  a  burly  ruffian  in  a  grimy 
tmiform. 

"Some  day  I  shall  teU  you  about  my  adven- 
ture with  a  car.  Dear  Lord,  what  an  adventure 
it  was! 

"Ah,  the  bitter-sweet  days!  the  long-ago  days 
when  we  were  young  and  troUeyed. 

"But  let  me  tell  you  how  Paderewski  played! 

"After  I  reached  my  seat  4000  women  cheered. 
I  was  the  only  man  in  the  house;  but  being 
modest,  I  stood  the  strain  as  long  as  I  could, 
and  then — why,  Paderewski  was  bowing,  and 
I  forgot  all  about  the  women  and  their  enthu- 
siasm at  the  sight  of  me. 

"Fancy  a  slender-hipped  orchidaceous  person, 
an  epicene  youth  v/ith  Botticellian  hair  and  a 
Nietzsche  walk.  Fancy  ten  fluted  figures  and 
then — oh,  you  didn't  care  what  he  was  playing — 
indeed,  I  mislaid  my  program — and  then  it  was 
time  to  go  home. 

179 


OLD  FOGY 

**Some  day  I  shall  give  you  my  impressions  of 
the  Paderewskian  technique,  but  today  is  a 
golden  day,  the  violets  are  smiling,  because  God 
gave  them  perfume;  a  lissome  lass  is  in  the 
foreground;  why  should  I  bother  about  piano, 
Paderewski,  or  technique? 

"Dear  Lord,  dear  Lord — !" 

Mr.  Quelson  looked  interrogatively  at  the 
committee  when  the  doctor  finished. 

"The  personal  note,  you  know,"  he  said, 
"the  note  that  is  so  valued  nowadays  in  criti- 
cism." 

"Personal  rubbish,"  grunted  the  doctor,  and 
Mr.  Slehbell  joyously  laughed. 

"Give  us  one  with  more  matter  and  less 
manner,"  remarked  Mr.  Sanderson,  who  had 
quietly  but  none  the  less  determinedly  eaten  up 
all  the  sandwiches  and  dnmk  seven  bottles  of 
beer.  Mr.  Van  Oven,  of  the  Morning  Fowl,  was, 
as  usual,  fast  asleep.  [This  was  the  manner  in 
which  he  composed  himself.] 

Mr.  Quelson  handed  the  doctor  the  following: 

Solid   Musical   Meat 

"The   small  hall  of  the   Mendelssohn   Glee 
Club  was  crowded  to  listen  to  the  polished  play- 
ing  of   the   Boston   Squintet   Club   last   night. 
It  was  a  graciously  inclined  audience,  and  after 
1 80 


A  COLLEGE  FOR  CRITICS 

Haydn,  Grieg,  and  Brahms  had  been  disclosed, 
it  departed  in  one  of  those  frames  of  mind  that  the 
chronicler  of  music  events  can  safely  denominate 
as  happy.  There  were  many  reasons,  which  may 
not  be  proclaimed  now  why  this  should  be  thus. 
The  first  quartet,  one  of  the  bhthest,  airiest,  and 
most  serene  of  Papa  Haydn's,  was  published 
with  absolute  finish,  if  not  with  abandon.  Its 
naive  measures  were  never  obsessed  by  the 
straining  after  modernity.  The  Grieg  is  hardly 
strict  quartet  music.  It  has  a  savor,  a  flavor, 
a  perfume,  an  odor,  even  a  sturdy  smell  of  the 
Norway  pine  and  fjord ;  but  it  is  lacking  woefully 
in  repose  and  euphony,  and  at  times  it  verges 
perilously  on  the  cacophonous.  Mr.  Casnoozle 
and  his  gifted  associates  played  a  marvelous 
accord  and  slid  over  all  the  yawning  tonal 
precipices,  but,  heavens,  how  they  did  perspire! 
The  Brahms  Quartet—" 

**I  protest,"  said  Mr.  Blink,  hastily  rising. 
"I've  been  insulted  ever  since  I  entered  the 
building.  Why,  the  very  name  of  the  institution 
is  an  insult  to  modem  musicians!  Brahms! 
why,  good  heavens,  Brahms  is  only  a  white- 
washed Hummel!  And  to  think  of  these  young 
minds  being  poisoned  by  such  antique  rot  as 
Brahms'  music!" 

In  a  moment  the  committee  was  on  its  legs 
i8i 


OLD  FOGY 

howling  and  jabbering;  poor  Mr.  Quelson  vainly 
endeavoring  to  keep  order.  After  ten  minutes 
of  rowing,  during  which  the  class  sang  The 
Night  That  Larry  Was  Stretched,  Dr.  Nopkin 
was  pushed  over  the  piano  and  fell  on  the  treble 
and  hurt  his  lungs.  The  noise  brought  to  their 
senses  the  irate  men,  and  then,  to  their  conster- 
nation, they  discovered  that  the  class  had 
sneaked  off  during  the  racket,  and  on  the  black- 
board was  written:  "Oh,  we  don't  know,  you're 
not  so  critical!" 

"My  Lord,"  groaned  Mr.  Quelson,  "they  have 
gone  to  that  infernal  Gregorian  chant-cricket 
match;  wait  till  I  get  hold  of  that  Palestrina 
McVickar!" 

The  committee  left  in  a  bad  humor  on  the  next 
train,  and  the  principal  of  Brahms  Institute  gave 
his  class  a  vacation.  Hereafter  he  will  do  his 
own  examining. 

182 


XX 

A    WONDER    CHILD 

A  RECENT  event  in  the  musical  world  of  La- 
puta  has  been  of  such  extraordinary  mo- 
ment as  to  warrant  me  in  making  some 
communication  of  same  to  your  valuable  sheet, 
and  although  in  these  days  of  electricity  one 
might  reasonably  imagine  the  cable  would  have 
outstripped  me,  still  by  careful  examination  of 
American  newspapers  I  find  only  meagre  mention 
of  the  remarkable  musical  occurrence  that 
shook  all  Laputa  to  its  centre  last  month.  As 
you  know,  we  pride  ourselves  on  being  a  thor- 
oughly musical  nation;  our  symphony  concert 
programs  and  our  operatic  repertory  contain  all 
the  novelties  that  are  extant.  To  be  sure,  we 
are  a  little  conservative  in  our  tastes  and  relish 
Mozart,  and,  must  it  be  confessed,  even  Haydn; 
but,  on  the  other  hand,  we  have  a  penchant  for 
the  Neo-Russian  school  and  hope  some  day  to 
found  a  trans-Asiatic  band  of  composers  whose 
names  will  probably  be  as  hard  as  their  har- 
monies are  to  European  and  American  ears. 

The  event  I  speak  of  transcends  anything  in 
the  prodigy  line  that  we  have  ever  encountered, 
for  while  we  have  been  deluged  with  boy  pianists, 
183 


OLD  FOGY 

infant  violinists,  and  baby  singers,  ad  nauseam, 
still  it  must  be  confessed  that  a  centenarian  piano 
virtuoso  who  would  make  his  debut  before  a 
curious  audience  on  his  hundredth  birthday  was 
a  novelty  indeed,  particularly  as  the  aged  artist 
in  question  had  been  studying  diligently  for  some 
ninety-five  years  under  the  best  masters  (and 
with  what  opportunities!)  and  would  also  on  this 
most  auspicious  occasion  conduct  an  orchestral 
composition  of  his  own,  a  Marche  Funebre  a  la 
Tartare,  for  the  first  time  in  public.  This,  then, 
I  repeat,  v/as  a  prodigy  that  promised  to  throw 
completely  in  the  shade  all  competitors,  in  addi- 
tion to  its  being  an  event  that  had  no  historical 
precedence  in  the  annals  of  music. 

With  what  burning  curiosity  the  night  of  the 
concert  was  awaited  I  need  not  describe,  nor  of 
the  papers  teeming  with  anecdotes  of  the  vener- 
able virtuoso  whose  name  betrayed  his  Asiatic 
origin.  His  great-grandchildren  (who  were  also 
his  managers)  announced  in  their  prospectus 
that  their  great-grandfather  had  never  played 
in  public  before,  and  with,  of  course,  the  excep- 
tion of  his  early  masters,  had  never  even  played 
for  anybody  outside  of  his  own  family  circle. 
Bom  in  1788,  he  first  studied  technics  with  the 
famous  Clementi  and  harmony  with  Albrechts- 
berger.  His  parents  early  imbued  him  (by  the 
184 


A  WONDER  CHILD 

aid  of  a  club)  with  the  idea  of  the  extreme  im- 
portance of  time  and  its  value,  if  rightfully  used, 
in  furthering  technique.  So,  from  five  hours  a 
day  in  the  beginning  he  actually  succeeded  in 
practising  eighteen  hours  out  of  the  twenty-four, 
which  commendable  practice  (literally)  he  con- 
tinued in  his  later  life. 

Although  he  had  only  studied  with  one  master, 
the  Gospadin  Bundelcund,  as  he  was  named,  had 
been  on  intimate  terms  with  all  the  great  virtuosi 
of  his  day,  and  had  heard  Beethoven,  Steibelt, 
Czemy,  Woelfl,  Kalkbrenner,  Cramer,  Hummel, 
Field,  Hiller,  Chopin,  Mendelssohn,  Liszt,  Hen- 
selt,  and  also  many  minor  Ughts  of  pianism  whose 
names  have  almost  faded  from  memory.  Always 
a  man  of  great  simpUcity  and  modesty,  he 
retired  more  and  more  amidst  his  studies  the 
older  he  grew,  and  even  after  his  marriage  he 
could  not  be  induced  to  play  in  public,  for  his 
ideal  was  a  lofty  one,  and  though  his  children, 
and  even  his  grandchildren,  often  urged  him  to 
make  his  d^but,  he  was  inflexible  on  the  subject. 
His  great-grandchildren,  howerer,  were  shrewd, 
and,  taking  advantage  of  the  aged  pianist's  in- 
creasing senility,  they  finally  succeeded  in  mak- 
ing him  promise  to  play  at  a  grand  concert,  to 
be  given  at  the  capital  of  Laputa,  and,  despite  his 
many  remonstrances,  he  at  last  consented. 
185 


OLD  FOGY 

It  goes  without  saying  that  the  attendance  at 
our  National  Opera  House  was  one  of  the  largest 
ever  seen  there.  The  wealth  and  brains  of  the 
capital  were  present,  and  all  eagerly  watched  for 
the  novel  apparition  that  was  to  appear.  The 
program  was  a  simple  one :  the  triple  piano  con- 
certo of  Bach,  arranged  for  one  piano  by  the 
Gospadin;  a  movement  from  the  G  minor  con- 
certo of  Dussek;  piano  solos,  UOrage,  by 
Steibelt;  a  fugue  for  the  left  hand  alone,  by 
Czerny,  and  a  set  of  etudes  after  Czemy,  being 
free  transcriptions  of  his  famous  Velocity  Studies, 
roused  the  deepest  curiosity  in  our  minds,  for 
vague  rumors  of  an  astonishing  technique  were  rife. 
And,  finally,  when  the  stage  doors  were  pushed 
wide  open  and  a  covered  litter  was  slowly  brought 
forward  by  six  dusky  slaves  and  gently  set  down, 
the  pent  up  feelings  of  the  audience  could  not  be 
restrained  any  longer,  and  a  shout  that  was 
almost  barbaric  shook  the  hall  to  its  centre. 

An  Echtstein  grand  piano,  with  the  action  pur- 
posely lightened  to  suit  the  pianist's  touch,  stood 
in  the  centre  of  the  stage,  and  a  large,  comfort- 
able looking  high-backed  chair  was  placed  in 
front  of  it.  The  attendants,  after  setting  the 
litter  down,  rolled  the  chair  up  to  it,  and  then 
parting  the  curtains  carefully,  and  even  rever- 
ently, lifted  out  what  appeared  to  be  a  mass  of 
i86 


A  WONDER  CHILD 

black  velvet  and  yellow  flax.  This  bundle 
they  placed  on  the  chair  and  wheeled  it  up  to  the 
piano  and  then  proceeded  to  bring  forth  a 
quantity  of  strange  looking  implements,  such  as 
hand  guides,  gymnasiums,  wires  and  pulleys,  and 
placed  them  around  the  odd,  lifeless  looking  mass 
on  the  chair.  Then  a  solemn  looking  individual 
came  forth  and  announced  to  the  audience  that 
the  soloist,  owing  to  his  extreme  feebleness, 
had  been  hypnotized  previous  to  the  concert,  as 
it  was  the  only  manner  in  which  to  get  him  to 
play,  and  that  he  would  be  restored  to  conscious- 
ness at  once  and  the  program  proceeded  with. 

There  was  a  slight  inclination  on  the  part  of 
the  audience  to  hiss,  but  its  extreme  curiosity 
speedily  checked  it  and  it  breathlessly  awaited 
results.  The  doctor,  for  he  was  one,  bent  over 
the  recumbent  figure  of  the  pianist  and,  lifting 
him  into  an  upright  position,  made  a  few  passes 
over  him  and  apparently  uttered  something  into 
his  ear  through  a  long  tube.  A  wonderful  change 
at  once  manifested  itself,  and  slowly  raising 
himself  on  his  feet  there  stood  a  gaunt  old  man, 
with  an  enormous  skull-like  head  covered  with 
long  yellowish  white  hair,  eyes  so  sunken  as  to  be 
invisible,  and  a  nose  that  would  defy  all  competi- 
tion as  to  size. 

After  fairly  tottering  from  side  to  side  in  his 
187 


OLD  FOGY 

efforts  to  make  a  bow,  the  Gospadin  (or,  as  you 
would  say.  Mister  or  Herr)  Bundelcund  fell 
back  exhausted  in  his  seat,  and  v/hile  a  murmur 
of  pity  ran  through  the  house  his  attendants  ad- 
ministered restoratives  out  of  uncanny  looking 
phials  and  vigorously  fanned  him.  By  this  time 
the  audience  had  worked  itself  up  to  a  fever  pitch 
(at  least  eight  tones  above  concert  pitch)  and 
nothing  short  of  an  earthquake  would  have  dis- 
persed it;  besides  the  price  of  admission  was 
enormous  and  naturally  every  one  wanted  the 
worth  of  his  money.  I  had  a  strong  glass  and 
eagerly  examined  the  old  man  and  saw  that  he 
had  long  skinny  fingers  that  resembled  claws, 
a  cadaverous  face  and  an  air  of  abstraction 
one  notices  in  very  old  or  deaf  persons.  To 
my  horror  I  noticed  that  the  doctor  in  addressing 
him  spoke  through  a  large  trumpet  and  then  it 
dawned  on  me  that  the  man  was  deaf,  and  hardly 
was  I  convinced  of  this  when  my  right  hand 
neighbor  informed  me  that  the  Gospadin  was 
blind  also,  and  being  feeble  and  exhausted  by 
piano  practice  hardly  ever  spoke;  so  he  was 
practically  dumb. 

Here  was  an  interesting  state  of  things,  and  my 
forebodings  as  to  the  result  were  further  strength- 
ened when  I  saw  the  attendants  place  the  old 
man's  fingers  in  the  technique-developing  ma- 
i88 


A  WONDER  CHILD 

chines  that  encumbered  the  stage,  and  vigor- 
ously proceeded  to  exercise  his  fingers,  wrists, 
and  forearms,  he  all  the  while  feebly  nodding, 
while  two  other  attendants  flapped  him  at  in- 
tervals with  bladders  to  keep  him  from  going  to 
sleep.  Again  my  right-hand  neighbor,  who  ap- 
peared to  be  loquacious,  informed  me  that  the 
Gospadin's  mercenary  great-grandchildren  kept 
him  awake  in  this  manner  and  thus  forced  him  to 
play  eighteen  hours  a  day.  What  a  cruelty, 
I  thought,  but  just  then  a  few  muffled  chords 
aroused  me  from  my  thoughts  and  I  directed  all 
my  attention  to  the  stage,  for  the  performance 
had  at  last  begun. 

Never  shall  I  forget  the  curious  sensation  I 
experienced  when  the  aged  prodigy  began  the 
performance  of  the  first  number,  his  own  re- 
markable arrangement  for  piano  solo  of  the  Bach 
concerto  in  D  minor  for  three  pianos,  and  I  in- 
stantly discovered  that  the  instrument  on  which 
he  played  had  organ  pedals  attached,  otherwise 
some  of  the  effects  he  produced  could  not  have 
been  even  hinted  at.  His  touch  was  weird,  his 
technique  indescribable,  and  one  no  longer 
listened  to  the  piano,  but  to  one  of  those  instru- 
ments of  Eastern  origin  in  which  glass  and  metal 
are  extensively  used.  The  quality  of  tone 
emanating  from  the  piano  was  brittle,  so  to 
189 


OLD  FOGY 

speak;  in  a  word,  sounded  so  thin,  sharp,  and  at 
times  so  wavering  as  to  suggest  the  idea  that  it 
might  at  any  moment  break.  And  then  it  made 
me  indescribably  nervous  to  see  his  talon-like 
fingers  threading  their  way  through  the  mazes 
of  the  concerto,  which  was  a  tax  on  any  player, 
and  though  the  three  piano  parts  were  but 
faintly  reproduced,  the  arrangement  showed 
ability  and  musicianship  in  the  handling  of  it. 
But  a  vague,  far-away  sort  of  a  feeling  pervaded 
the  whole  performance,  which  left  me  at  the  end 
rather  more  dazed  than  otherwise. 

During  the  uproarious  applause  that  followed 
my  neighbor  again  remarked  to  me  that  though 
the  old  man  did  not  appear  to  be  as  much  ex- 
hausted as  he  had  anticipated,  still  he  feared  the 
worst  from  this  great  strain  of  his  appearing  be- 
fore such  a  public  and  under  such  exciting  cir- 
ctmistances,  and  then  becoming  confidential  he 
whispered  to  me  that  the  agents  for  the  Paul  von 
Janko  keyboard  had  approached  the  venerable 
pianist,  but  after  inspecting  the  invention  the 
latter  had  replied  wearily  that  he  was  too  old  to 
begin  "tobogganing"  now.  My  neighbor  seemed 
to  be  amused  at  this  joke,  and  not  until  the  or- 
chestra had  begun  the  tutti  of  the  G  minor  con- 
certo of  Dussek  (an  intimate  friend  of  the  Gos- 
padin's,  by  the  way)  did  he  cease  his  chuckling. 
190 


A  WONDER  CHILD 

The  concerto  was  played  in  a  dreary  fashion, 
and  only  the  strenuous  efforts  of  the  attendants 
on  each  side  of  the  soloist  kept  him  from  going  ofif 
into  a  sound  nap  during  every  tutti.  The  rest 
of  the  piano  program  was  almost  the  same  story. 
The  Steibelt  selection,  the  old-fashioned  L'Orage, 
was  no  storm  at  all,  but  a  feeble,  maundering  up 
and  down  the  keyboard.  The  Czerny  fugue  was 
better  and  the  performance  of  the  same  com- 
poser's Velocity  Studies  was  a  marvel  of  light- 
ness and  one  might  almost  say  volubility.  In 
these  etudes  his  wonderful  stiff  arm  octave 
playing,  in  the  real  old-fashioned  manner,  showed 
itself,  for  in  every  run  in  single  notes  he  intro- 
duced octaves.  The  applause  after  this  was  so 
great  and  the  flappers  at  the  pianist's  side  pUed 
him  so  vigorously  that  the  Gospadin  actually 
began  playing  the  Hexameron,  that  remarkably 
difficult  and  old  set  of  variations  on  the  march 
in  Puritani,  by  Liszt,  Chopin,  Pixis,  and  Thalberg. 

These  he  played,  it  must  be  confessed,  in  a 
masterly  manner,  but  at  the  end  he  introduced  a 
variation,  prodigious  as  to  difficulty,  which  I 
failed  to  recognize  as  ever  having  seen  it  in  the 
printed  copy  of  the  composition.  Again  my 
right-hand  neighbor,  appearing  to  anticipate  my 
question  on  the  subject,  informed  me  that  it 
was  by  Bundelcund  himself,  and  that  he  had 
191 


OLD  FOGY 

been  angered  beyond  control  by  the  refusal  of  the 
publishers  to  print  it  with  the  rest,  and  had 
written  a  lengthy  letter  to  Liszt  on  the  subject,  in 
which  he  told  him  that  he  considered  him  a 
charlatan  along  with  Henselt,  Chopin,  Hiller, 
and  Thalberg,  and  that  he  was  the  only  pianist 
worth  speaking  of,  which  information  threw  an 
interesting  side  light  on  our  Asiatic  virtuoso's 
character,  and  showed  that  he  was  made  of 
about  the  same  metal,  after  all,  as  most  of  your 
European  manipulators  of  ivory. 

By  this  time  the  stage  had  been  cleared  of  the 
piano  and  the  litter,  and  a  conductor's  stand 
was  brought  forward,  draped  in  black  velvet 
trimmed  with  white,  and  .appropriately  wreathed 
with  tuberoses,  whose  deathly-sweet  odor  dif- 
fused itself  throughout  the  house  and  caused  an 
unpleasant  shudder  to  circulate  through  the 
audience,  who  were  beginning  to  realize  the 
mockery  of  this  modem  dance  of  death,  but  who 
remained  to  see  the  end  of  the  sad  comedy.  The 
orchestra,  which  was  reinforced  by  several  un- 
canny looking  instruments,  strange  even  to 
Asiatic  eyes,  were  seated,  and  then  the  dusky 
servants  lifted  with  infinite  care  the  aged  Bundel- 
cund  into  a  standing  posture,  placed  him  at  the 
stand,  and  while  four  held  him  there  the  two 
flappers  were  so  imremitting  in  their  attentions 
192 


A  WONDER  CHILD 

that  one  might  suppose  the  old  man's  face 
would  be  sore,  were  it  not  for  its  almost  total 
absence  of  fiesh,  and  also  his  long,  thick  hair, 
which  fell  far  below  his  waist. 

Standing  in  an  erect  attitude  he  was  an 
appalling  figure  to  behold,  and  the  two  lighted 
tapers  in  massive  candelabras  on  each  side  of 
the  desk  Hghted  up  his  face  with  an  unholy  and 
gruesome  glare.  The  funereal  aspect  of  the 
scene  was  heightened  by  the  house  being  in 
total  darkness,  and  though  many  women  had 
fainted,  oppressed  by  the  charnel-house  atmo- 
sphere that  surrounded  us,  still  the  audience  as  a 
whole  remained  spellbound  in  their  seats.  The 
medical  man  now  pUed  the  conductor-pianist 
with  the  contents  of  the  mysterious  phial,  and 
placing  a  long,  white  ostrich  plume  in  his  hand, 
he  made  a  signal  for  the  orchestra  to  begin. 
The  conductor,  despite  his  deafness,  appeared 
to  comprehend  what  was  going  on  and  feebly 
waved  the  plume  in  air,  and  the  first  gloomy 
chords  of  the  Marche  Funebre  a  la  Tartare 
were  heard.  Of  all  the  funeral  marches  ever 
penned  this  composition  certainly  outdid  them 
all  in  diabolical  wailings  and  the  gnashing  of 
teeth  of  damned  souls. 

It  was  the  funeral  march  of  some  mid-Asiatic 
pachyderm,  and  the  whole  herd  were  howling 
193 


OLD  FOGY 

their  grief  in  a  manner  which  would  put  Wagnei; 
Berlioz, and  Meyerbeer  to  shame;  for  such  a  use 
of  brass  had  never  been  even  dreamed  of,  and  the 
peculiar  looking  instrtunents  I  first  spoke  of  now 
came  to  the  fore  and  the  din  they  raised  was 
positively  hellish.  Those  who  could  see  the 
composer's  face  afterward  declared  it  was 
wreathed  in  smiles,  but  this,  of  course,  I  could 
not  see;  but  I  did  see,  and  we  all  saw,  after  the 
rather  abrupt  end  of  the  march  (which  finished 
after  a  long-drawn-out  suspension,  capo  d'astro, 
resolved  by  the  use  of  the  diseased  chord  of  the 
minor  thirteenth  into  a  dissipated  fifth),  the 
venerable  virtuoso  suddenly  collapse,  and  sud- 
denly fall  into  the  arms  of  the  attendants,  whose 
phlegm,  while  being  thoroughly  Oriental,  still 
smacked  of  anticipation  of  this  very  event. 
Instantly  the  lights  went  out  and  a  panic  ensued, 
everyone  getting  into  the  street  somehow  or 
other.  I  found  myself  there  side  by  side  with 
my  neighbor,  who  informed  me  in  an  oracular 
manner  that  he  had  expected  this  all  along. 

Then  an  immense  crowd,  angered  by  the 
cruel  exhibition  which  they  had  witnessed, 
searched  high  and  low  for  the  miscreant  and 
mercenary  great-grandchildren  who  had  so 
ruthlessly  sacrificed  their  talented  progenitor 
for  the  sake  of  pelf,  but  they  were  nowhere  to  be 
194 


A  WONDER  CHILD 

found,  and  they  doubtlessly  had  escaped  with  their 
booty  to  a  safe  place.  The  doctor  had  also 
disappeared  and  with  him  all  traces  of  the 
Gospadin  Bundelcund,  and  soon  after  sinister 
rumors  were  spread  that  the  man  we  had  heard 
performing  was  a  dead  man  (horrible  idea!) 
that  he  had  been  dead  for  years,  but  by  the  aid 
of  that  new  and  yet  undeveloped  science,  hyp- 
notism, he  had  been  revived  and  made  to  auto- 
matically perform,  and  that  the  whole  ghastly 
mummery  was  planned  to  make  money.  Certain 
it  was  that  we  never  heard  of  any  of  the  partici- 
pants in  the  affair  again,  and  I  write  to  you  know- 
ing that  American  readers  will  be  interested  in 
this  queer  musical  and  psychical  prodigy.  His 
epitaph  might  be  given  in  a  slightly  altered 
quotation,  "Butchered  to  make  a  Laputian's 
hohday." 

195 


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Miiiiimiimi 

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